Air Date 11/5/2024
JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: [00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast.
There's big money in politics, and then there's 2024. The role and influence of billionaires has taken on new shapes and patterns as the threat of fascism has made itself undeniably known, from the candidate and the campaigners to those acquiescing to the mere threat of power, billionaires are everywhere you look in this election season.
For those looking for a quick overview, the sources providing our Top Takes in about 55 minutes today includes Reveal; 5-4; The Majority Report; The Muckrake Political Podcast; The Bradcast; and Today, Explained. Then in the additional Deeper Dives half of the show, there'll be more in four sections:
Section A. Democracy dying in daylight;
Section B. Actual election interference;
Section C. Elon Musk, the billionaire; and
Section D. Trump, the fascist.
Why Elon Musk Went Full MAGA - Reveal - Air Date 10-30-24
AL LETSON - HOST, REVEAL: Anna, how would you define Musk's politics?
ANNA MERLAN: [00:01:00] So this is a really interesting question because, like a lot of very wealthy people who own businesses, he's complained bitterly about federal regulation, right? He's gotten in fights with the FCC. He's just seemed really critical of government as a concept.
But at the same time, two of his companies have billions of dollars in federal contracts. That would be SpaceX, his rocket company, and then Tesla, his car company. They have incredibly lucrative and really consequential contracts with the federal government.
So he's in this interesting position where he's both very critical of government and pretty involved in it. No matter who wins, he will still be pretty involved in it through his companies.
AL LETSON - HOST, REVEAL: Yeah. I think it's safe to say that even though his companies will still do work with the government, regardless of who wins, he's probably seeing a larger windfall if [00:02:00] Donald Trump wins.
ANNA MERLAN: Yeah, that's accurate. Donald Trump has actually said that if he is elected, he will make Musk the head of a new government efficiency commission with the power to recommend wide-ranging cuts, to change federal rules, to rollback regulations, including things like safety regulations that he's complained about affecting Tesla and SpaceX. It's fair to say that this is going to be pretty consequential for him and his companies, both personally and financially, if Donald Trump takes office.
AL LETSON - HOST, REVEAL: Speaking of Donald Trump, I just have to say that when he took the stage with Musk in Butler, Pennsylvania back in early October, I cannot know what was in the former president's mind, but I would say that while Elon was jumping on stage, the look that Trump gave him was kind of like, "Uh, buddy."
ANNA MERLAN: A really indelible photo.
AL LETSON - HOST, REVEAL: So what comes to mind when I saw that [00:03:00] photo was that these men are very much kind of the opposite in some ways, and very much alike in a lot of ways. And they're lockstep. Can you talk to me a little bit about that? Like, how are they alike?
ANNA MERLAN: Well, you know, they've feuded a lot over the years and in a way, they've feuded because they are so similar. They're both people with one might almost say like messianic beliefs in their own sort of abilities and their own importance in the history of the country and the world. They are both people who believe very strongly in unfounded ideas about voter fraud. They both like to talk a lot about things like illegal immigration at length.
But, we could probably say that Elon Musk is a more successful businessman than Donald Trump. But again, they are, both of them have inflated and mythologized their claims about how they run their businesses over the years. I guess there are more similarities than there are differences [00:04:00] now that I think about it.
AL LETSON - HOST, REVEAL: Yeah, I will say Elon may be the better businessman. And if you just go by financial value, obviously, Elon is worth more than Donald Trump. But I would say that like when Trump was in his prime, there aren't many people that know how to connect and work an audience the way Trump could, let's say 2016. I don't think right now, but 2016 he was masterful in how he worked his audience and how he worked his message.
And every time you see Elon in public, it's just really awkward.
ANNA MERLAN: Yeah.
AL LETSON - HOST, REVEAL: So going back to Musk and the election and Trump, the New York Times has reported that he's effectively moved his base of operations to Pennsylvania to support Trump's campaign. Why Pennsylvania?
ANNA MERLAN: Yeah, Pennsylvania is going to be pretty consequential.
But what is interesting to me here, though, is that obviously Elon Musk is throwing tons and tons and tons of money into the Trump [00:05:00] campaign. But at this point, while you and I are sitting here talking, Kamala Harris is still outraising Donald Trump on the whole, right? She still has an enormous cash advantage.
So one thing that Elon Musk's involvement here is going to do is it's going to be an interesting case study in how much one person's money moves the needle. You know what I mean? How much specifically Elon Musk's involvement does something and whether one guy can have an outsized effect on the election
AL LETSON - HOST, REVEAL: Yeah, so he's offered to give away a million dollars each day to randomly chosen registered voters in some swing states Including Pennsylvania who agree to sign a petition supporting the first and second amendment. First, is that legal? It doesn't feel like it's legal, right? Like you can't give people prizes for elections.
ANNA MERLAN: So the Department of Justice has warned Elon Musk and AmericaPAC that this $1 million daily giveaway might indeed be [00:06:00] contravening federal law. AmericaPAC is saying, no, it is perfectly legal, we're not paying people for votes, we're paying people who signed this pledge, we're awarding a prize to a randomly-chosen person who signs this pledge. So, it's fair to say that the DOJ is super interested in what's going on here, and they're paying very close attention. So I guess we'll see what happens with that.
AL LETSON - HOST, REVEAL: How would you characterize the kind of power that Musk has right now? The influence he has, being the world's richest man, with one of the most popular social media platforms in the country. It seems unprecedented.
ANNA MERLAN: Yeah, it certainly feels unprecedented to me, in that there have always been billionaires and titans of industry who get involved in politics, like Henry Ford famously ran for Senate and then when he lost, suspected voter fraud and suspected it very loudly.
But I think the scale of Musk's involvement is really different because it's not just that he's a billionaire. It's not just that he's [00:07:00] endorsing Trump. It's also that he controls a powerful and widespread communication medium, which is Twitter. And I think Musk's role in this election cycle is probably going to be studied for years to come, to understand really what it did.
AL LETSON - HOST, REVEAL: Do you think he can actually tip the balance of favor for Trump?
ANNA MERLAN: I really wonder about this because this is such a complicated election. There's so many things going on. It's one of those things where it's like, if just money mattered, there would still be a question, because Harris is still out-raising Trump.
So, I think that probably in the end, his effect on the election is not going to be discernible, though I could be wrong. I think it's going to have much greater effects on him and his business and his public profile, which could be good or bad. We'll see.
AL LETSON - HOST, REVEAL: Yeah. What will you be watching from Elon Musk as the election gets near?
I mean, I think the big thing that journalists are paying attention to is allegations of voter fraud, [00:08:00] election interference from him that he's either posting himself or reposting on Twitter, and how those allegations move when he makes them. Does him making a claim cause it to spread extremely widely, for instance.
So I'm going to be paying attention to that. I'm going to be paying attention to where he decides to be on the ground. And then of course, once the election results come in, depending on how they go, I am super curious to see if he questions them, if he accepts the results of the elections or not.
Because I do think that again, somebody with a platform like the one he has, if he decides to claim that the election was illegitimate, that could be a pretty big deal.
Elon Musks War on Workers - 5-4 - AIr Date 10-29-24
MICHAEL MORBIUS - HOST, 5-4: Several large companies have recently had actions brought against them through the NLRB, and they have responded to the NLRB to those actions by arguing that the NLRB is functionally unconstitutional.
RHIANNON HAMAM - HOST, 5-4: Yeah, four big companies, probably everybody listening [00:09:00] to this has at least seen some headlines about one or more of these companies doing terrible labor practices and being taken in front of the NLRB for complaints about violations of the NLRA. And then also these companies then taking their cases to court to challenge the NLRB's decisions and now challenge the NLRB existing at all.
These companies: SpaceX, of course, run by the monster Elon Musk. Amazon, run by the goon Jeff Bezos. Trader Joe's, run by Shirley, and an insane person whose name I don't know. And Starbucks, that ugly guy that runs Starbucks. It's these four bad actors, these four companies have been charged with, over the past few years, have been charged in front of the [00:10:00] NLRB, of course, with complaints of firing pro-union workers, retaliating against organizing by cutting hours, closing shops, denying benefits being provided to non union workers, and bargaining with workers in bad faith.
Currently, and I think this was as of March of this year, Amazon had 250 cases, open cases in front of the NLRB. Starbucks had 741 open or settled cases by that time in front of the NLRB. Trader Joe's was actively being charged with retaliating against workers for organizing activity and for failing to bargain in good faith. And then famously, of course, Amazon has denied the right of workers to organize into a union left and fucking right.
So, now, I believe the first of these companies to make the [00:11:00] legal argument, and then was joined by the rest of these companies, make the legal argument that the NLRB is unconstitutional actually, is SpaceX. And Elon has been talking all over the internet about this bullshit. And here's what SpaceX is arguing, again joined by Amazon, Starbucks and Trader Joe's in this legal case. Their argument in court is that the existence of NLRB, the NLRB structure, violates the provisions in the Constitution that protect the separation of powers, right? So SpaceX is saying that the NLRB exercises this prosecutorial function by enforcing labor laws, but also has a legislative function by being about like a labor policy. And then it's adjudicatory authority. These are administrative law proceedings where administrative law judges are adjudicating complaints at the NLRB [00:12:00] that this violates the separation of powers, that no federal agency should be able to prosecute and also legislate and also adjudicate, right? Judges and the executive branch and the legislative branch, those should all be separate.
Now, They're also arguing that the NLRA, the law that created the NLRB, only allows the NLRB to basically provide or decide that equitable back pay is the remedy for workers who are making complaints, and complaints that are found to be true, about labor law violations.
MICHAEL MORBIUS - HOST, 5-4: To jump in here, the reason that this is so pernicious is because if the only relief that can be awarded in these cases is back pay, it pays to just do unfair labor practices. You might as well just fire people who are organizing, because the worst case scenario is that you just owe them the wages that you would have owed them.
And I also want to add some color. The original issue that this spawned out of was [00:13:00] that several SpaceX employees criticized Elon Musk in an open letter. And then SpaceX just fired them. Usually it's like you try to organize a union and you get fired, but with SpaceX, it's just like, you can't be mean to daddy Elon. And I will also add, while we're on the topic of Elon Musk, maybe six or seven years ago, some discrimination cases came out of Tesla that were the most egregious cases to enter federal courts in years.
Just to give you a little bit of an example, there were supervisors openly using the N word in Tesla factories, and Tesla defended that case. They did not settle. They took it to a judgment, which they lost. But that's part of Elon's philosophy of fight every case because he truly does not give a shit about the conditions in his workplace.
RHIANNON HAMAM - HOST, 5-4: Yeah, speaking of the stinky billionaires who are so ugly and don't care about the workplaces that they [00:14:00] run, Jeff Bezos. Let's talk about Amazon. Amazon jumped on board, of course, with Elon's case challenging the constitutionality of the NLRB. Amazon has so many complaints in front of the NLRB, something like 250 as of March of this year. Three administrative law judges at the NLRB had already ruled against Amazon. A federal court had ordered that Amazon not interfere with workers organizing rights. That's where Amazon is at legally.
PETER SHAMSHIRI - HOST, 5-4: Starbucks, as Rhiannon mentioned, has had a lot of claims against it at the NLRB. In one particular case, it's being charged with unfair labor practices for interfering with two workers who were union organizing in Philadelphia. That's the case that they have decided to bring this claim echoing SpaceX, saying the NLRB is unconstitutional. And, I just wanted to read this funny bit from that complaint. On January 25th, the store manager sent an email to his [00:15:00] boss, the district manager, venting about the two employees who were union organizing and stating he was, quote, "willing to deal with the backlash that would come with terminating the two of them, because it doesn't matter if we terminate now or one year from now, they will still call the NLRB." That's definitely the email you want in your unfairly practices lawsuit.
MICHAEL MORBIUS - HOST, 5-4: Just make the phone call. I don't want to help. I don't want to help managers out. But just pick up the phone and say the illegal thing. It's not that hard.
PETER SHAMSHIRI - HOST, 5-4: Yeah.
Trader Joe's also getting on this. Also, you, will never believe this, accused of being union busting. No way. Again, just a funny note from that case, the ALJ, the law administrative law judge when they first made their motion was like, I'm certainly not going to be ruling on my own constitutionality anytime soon. You're going to have to be taking this up with the federal courts, basically. But they are. And we'll see [00:16:00] what the Supreme Court says.
Elon Musk Is SO Bad At This - The Majority Report - Air Date 11-3-24
EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: But let's pull up this article from Wired by Jake LaHute, who I knew back in the day when he was reporting in New Hampshire, but he's with Wired now. And he did this reporting on workers that are working for the America PAC, Elon Musk's PAC, door knocking for Trump. If we could just scroll down to the opening paragraph. "In Michigan, canvassers and paid door knockers for the former president, contracted by a firm associated with America PAC, have been subjected to poor working conditions, a number of them, working conditions.
A number of them have been driven around in the back of a seatless U-Haul van, according to video obtained by Wired, and threatened that their lodging at a local motel wouldn't be paid for if they didn't meet canvassing quotas. One doorknocker alleges that they didn't even know they were signing up for anything having to do with Musk or Trump. A representative for Musk and AmericaPAC did not return a request for comment. [00:17:00] The contract these doorknockers signed with Blitz Canvassing, which is a subcontractor of Musk's America PAC, says they are expected to maintain a 17 to 22 percent engagement rate during their campaign, which is a high target relative to the number of people who typically open the door for a stranger." That is extremely high and unrealistic target, I'll just say anecdotally. "A group of out-of-state America PAC canvassers were told during a recent team meeting that if they didn't hit their targets, which the door knocker says, were more than a thousand a week on total doors knocked, the organization would stop paying for their motel rooms."
So, Wired obtained this audio, but let's scroll and, did they have the photo of the -- here we go. Here it is. This is the photo of the van that they're apparently driving them around in. And, not --
MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: It's a moving violation, I think?
EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Yes. Yes. And, the door knockers, they spoke to Wired under the condition of anonymity because, of course, this --
MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: The richest man in the world put them in the back of a van?
EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: And made them sign [00:18:00] NDAs. But, this part here. "One of the canvassers who was flown out from the Midwest tells Wired that they had no idea they would be knocking on doors in support of Trump, or that the subcontractor that they were working for was a part of Elon Musk's voter turnout operation through AmericaPAC. 'I knew nothing of the job, or much of the job description, other than going door to door and asking the voters who they are voting for,'" says a doorknocker who was one of the people in the back of the van and who was requesting anonymity because of the NDA. "'Then after I signed over an NDA is when I found out that we are for Republicans and with Trump.' The doorknocker adds that they had overheard my su --" can we scroll down a little? Doorknocker adds -- no, still that part, "that they had overheard my supervisor and a few others mention Elon Musk by name marking the first time that they had heard of the billionaire ex owner's involvement."
This is the other part that's key here: "The Trump campaign has largely outsourced its field operation in Michigan to Musk, a move that has come under heavy criticism, as previously reported by [00:19:00] Wired. Blitz canvassing has also reportedly had issues with fake door knocks being flagged by campaign sidekick, the glitchy app used by AmericaPAC. In Nevada and Arizona, up to a quarter of the door interactions were flagged as potential fakes within the app, according to The Guardian. They did their own research."
The other part that I don't need to read, but they also point out that these people that they hired, none of them have valid driver's licenses. I think, I would imagine that they're paying them very little, and they're shoving them in the back of a U-Haul, and having them meet these impossible quotas, and if they don't, they won't pay for their hotel room. And then there's reports out of Arizona and Nevada that they're faking it. Of course they are, because they're trying to get paid and be able to keep their lodging and --
MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Efficiency.
EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: The gamification of this is everything that's horrible about tech, and everything that's also not effective in doing these kinds of actual door-to-door retail politics. It's also the other [00:20:00] stuff that gives me more confidence than the polls would suggest, because the fact that he's giving his get out the vote operation, Trump is handing it over to this complete charlatan, it shows right there what this actually looks like.
BRANDON SUTTON: Yeah, he came and paid for it to be done well. Like he has all the money in the world. So much money that he gives away a million dollars in Pennsylvania a day, which might also get him in trouble very soon. And so, but he can't help but subcontract it out to make it as cheap as possible.
MATT BINDER: I saw that picture and all I could think of was, damn, that's how like my high school punk band traveled to shows back when we were funded by my Applebee's dishwasher job that I worked on the weekends. That's literally how we traveled: the sitting in the van like that. This is apparently a company that Musk's group contracted out to, with a $9 million contract or something like that. And that's what they're doing.
And also, I think it [00:21:00] speaks a lot to not just Musk, but like the whole tech, Silicon Valley mindset as well. So many of these guys have convinced, especially Musk, have convinced the world that their geniuses when their entire reality is fake it till you make it. And their success has been basically faking it long enough until they actually make it. But the problem is, you're not going to be able to do that with every single endeavor you launch. You fake it till you make it on one endeavor and you get lucky and it hits off. Everyone thinks you're a genius. But once you try to do multiple things like Musk is now doing, and you're trying to fake it till you make it for all of them, eventually people are going to see that, Oh, this is how he runs. And he just got lucky previously.
BRANDON SUTTON: Also, just real quick about that too, along with Fake Until You Make It, they also, with Blitzscaling and other types of semi legal businesses, they believe in breaking the law until you are big enough and powerful [00:22:00] enough that you can change the law to retroactively make what you did legal or at least not be prosecuted for it.
And it doesn't seem -- I know when you talk about human trafficking, you think about those true crime videos where like people's kids get taken or like people across the border, stuff like that -- but moving people across borders, across state lines, under false pretences, and then trying to withhold their ability to get home or withhold their ability to escape, is or could be interpreted as a type of human trafficking. And so that's just another crime he's committing that he may or may never see justice for.
The Trump White Supremacy Festival and Hootenanny - The Muckrake Political Podcast - Air Date 10-29-24
NICK HAUSELMAN - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: And if we can, and I'm looking at it now to remind myself, the Post was vehemently against Trump and had written, you can argue in there, coverage of him was pretty negative. And in retaliation, Trump had the Department of Justice file this suit against him.
The Amazon, which they had tried to get dismissed because they felt there was political retribution. So you know, as a businessman, he's like, I don't want that again. I don't want to do it at all. So [00:23:00] let's, sit this one out and signal that, you know, again, this is such, it's a petty dictator, right?
Using his authoritarian powers. And you know, from day one, they're, going to be able to do a lot, be a lot more effective in that. Um, did you see that they're actually going to try and, um, uh, circumvent the FBI's vetting process for, uh, access to top secret material? Did you see that? Oh, that, that, that is just wonderful.
That's good. Yeah. So they're going to, they're going to, there's some way I think that they, they figured out that the president can override that. And we know that because Jerry Kushner could not get a clearance originally, right? Because he lied. On his FS 86 form so many times and you know, you know, when you fill out that form, it says, you know, under penalty of like felony, like you were going to go to prison and they never, nothing ever happened to him on that one.
And then Trump finally like waved his magic wand and he was able to get, uh, you know, access to all sorts of secrets. Supposedly they're going to do that again. And, but this time is a broad swath across a whole bunch of these loyalists who are going to come in from day one. [00:24:00] Um, you know, it's, uh, I'm trying to convince myself that it won't matter.
Like I'm living in my bubble in California and nothing will affect me. And, uh, I don't know, but it doesn't feel any better thinking about it that way.
JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: Yeah, because it's not true. Unfortunately, like, I mean, the, the, the, the cultural change in the political sort of see change affects everybody. And on top of that, you are inherently and intrinsically linked to people who are going to suffer, right?
They are just versions of you out in the world trying to live a life just like you are. And quite frankly, Yeah. Like the only people who are actually going to benefit from this are people like Jeff Bezos, that's it. And, you know, people have been bringing up the Los Angeles times, refusing to endorse. And it's owned of course, by Dr.
Patrick Soon Shiong, uh, the, the, uh, the doctor who's made these drugs and all that now has billions of dollars, a reminder to everybody that Soon Shiong like asked Donald Trump to be part of his administration in 2016 and 2017, like, When this state of play emerges, it isn't [00:25:00] just capitulation, Nick. It is recognizing an opening to power and wealth.
And that is how this cycle works at first. Everyone's like, Oh, this is so disgusting. I don't want any part of that. This is dangerous. And by the way, shame on the Washington post for their democracy dies in darkness bullshit, which just made people feel better. Like they were somehow or another getting a newspaper subscription, but making a real difference at the same time.
It's total charlatan bullshit. But as the state of play and environment has changed, Nick, what we're now seeing is a willingness to embrace people like Donald Trump because they're a means to an end to further enrichment and empowerment. It's now the manners don't matter now. It doesn't matter what he actually says.
All that rally that we talked about earlier, like that stuff isn't enough to repel people. Now it's obvious that things are changing and developing and metastasizing to the point where people like Bezos, Zuckerberg, Musk, you name it. They recognize that they have everything to gain from this, which for the [00:26:00] record is the next step in the authoritarian cycle.
It's when they buy in, they see this as something that helps them, something that they should go ahead and put their money and their power and their weight behind. And that's when it starts gaining some serious traction and momentum.
NICK HAUSELMAN - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: Right. And what's supposed to be able to balance all of that is like the business aspect of it, where enough people will say, I'm not going to.
Subscribe to the Washington Post anymore. I know I canceled my subscription as soon as I read that over the weekend. And I saw reports where, uh, in one day they lost as half as many subscriptions as they had gotten all year long, you know, across the board from, from the digital side, uh, But unfortunately Bezos doesn't give a shit because we, you know, people have become so rich, right?
They, they've allowed to accumulate so many billions that losing like 1 billion doesn't mean anything to them. And they don't care if the Washington post is, you know, lost a whole bunch of subscriptions. Um, eventually maybe you could hurt them enough where like the, the bottom line is, is something that's [00:27:00] significant.
But, uh, I, again, they, they've become so rich at this point that they don't care, even though someone like Musk as well.
JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: Well, I think there's a couple of things to look at here, which are really important. One, cancelling your subscription to the Washington Post. He doesn't give a shit about that. He didn't buy the Washington Post to make money.
He bought the Washington Post in order to influence the communication environment of the United States of America. That's worth way more to him than any amount of subscriptions we would pay for. Also, you know what would hurt more? Cancelling your subscription to Amazon Prime. Or buying things from Amazon.
And that right there is where a lot of his money is made. But Nick, I want to point something out. That still doesn't hurt him all that much. You know why? Because the vast majority of the money that Jeff Bezos makes is actually from his contracts with the United States government. I don't control that.
You don't control that. The idea that our dollars, whether it's the Washington Post or Amazon Prime, are going to make a difference isn't true. [00:28:00] We could boycott him all day long. It's the fact that the government, like, it depends on him. He is still going to get all of these different contracts. The only way that this changes is if we have a sea change in terms of how the government does business.
And we've already seen Elon Musk has promoted some of the worst conspiracy theories and also election interference that we've ever seen. Do you think for a second that any government contract he's up for has been affected in any way, shape or form?
NICK HAUSELMAN - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: Uh, no, I guess only the invites to the, uh, events that they have about electric cars.
But other than that, nothing else has been canceled.
JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: Nick, he has been enabling and working with dictators around the world. He actually, if America is a supporter of Ukraine, why didn't he lose some of his contracts to be investigated after he helped Russia in their invasion of Ukraine? On top of that, we just found out that Taiwan that the United States of America is supposed to support in its, in its conflict with China, we just found out that he screwed them over at the behest of Vladimir Putin, the whole point.
[00:29:00] And again, just to bring this thing full circle, we've talked about Israel and Saudi Arabia and how they realized the United States is powerless to do anything for them because their construct of power depends on them, right? They can do whatever they want. The oligarchs understand that as well. They can do anything that they want and they're still going to get the contracts because they're basically the only game in town.
They have monopolized the functions of the United States government and all of its complexes. And so as a result, like why would you piss off a guy who might be the next president of the United States of America and also serves your bottom line? It will only change when our government actually changes and our environment changes.
That does start with us demanding it, but it's not going to be from boycotting Amazon prime or canceling Washington post subscription.
Ballots Burn in WA, OR; Billionaire WaPo, LATimes owners 'Obey in Advance - The BradCast - Air Date 10-28-24
BRAD FRIEDMAN - HOST, THE BRADCAST: Unfortunately, he is not alone. 3,000 miles to the west, Bezos's fellow billionaire, Patrick Soon Shiong, the owner of the Los Angeles Times, since 2018, pulled the same maneuver in killing his editorial [00:30:00] board's endorsement of Harris that had been in the works for weeks, and which followed months of editorials warning of the authoritarian dangers of a Trump presidency.
Observers noted that Soon Shiong is a longtime close friend to, yes, you guessed it, lottery man, Elon Musk. Vote buying man, Elon Musk. The world's richest man and who has thrown all his time and considerable dollars, more than 100 million that we know of so far into getting Donald Trump elected, even if he has to offer voters the possibility of a million dollars to sign them up in that effort.
Writes Will Bunch, while the moral center of the journalistic universe seemed to be collapsing, Trump told a rally in Tempe, Arizona that the media is, quote, the media is, quote, the enemy of the people. Echoing ominous language of dictators from the 1930s [00:31:00] and quickly followed that by a new threat to create licensing problems for CBS because Trump did not like the way they edited a 60 minutes interview with Kamala Harris.
And then a lengthy post on Truth Social, his dumb media site, threatening to prosecute his political enemies. He has already suggested several times that he would be willing to use the U. S. military. To help him do that, to round up his domestic political enemies. not just migrants in this country who so many of Trump's supporters seem to think he is talking about, despite Trump's own repeated words to the contrary, saying, no, I'm not talking about immigrants. I'm talking about my domestic political enemies. I'm talking about the Nancy Pelosi's. I'm talking about the Adam Schiff's. Maybe Fox News doesn't play those words to his supporters as much. I don't know. Maybe [00:32:00] outlets on the left don't play those words as much as they should. But the message here is clear, writes Bunch.
The cowardice of the news organizations controlled by Jeff Bezos and Sun Xiong has already taught Donald Trump, in the words of Yale's Tim Snyder. What? Power can do. And if he prevails in next week's election, he plans to bring that hammer down in full force, make no mistake. I should note again here, as we did last week on this program, I believe that on page 247 of the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, the 900 page policy blueprint for Trump's next term as written by dozens of former Trump administration officials.
At least the ones who aren't out right now trying to loudly warn that he's a fascist and should never be allowed anywhere near the Oval Office again. Chapter 8, page 247 of Project 2025, it is noted [00:33:00] that, quote, Pacifica Radio. Which owns our flagship station here in Los Angeles and helps syndicate this program to dozens of other Pacifica radio outlet, radio affiliate stations around the country and across the world.
That Pacifica Radio, they're specifically mentioned by name, should be defunded and quote, shorn of the presumption that they act in the public interest and receive the privileges that often accompany so acting. Now to date, I can report that Pacifica Radio. A network founded in 1946 by Lewis Hill and E.
John Lewis in opposition to fascism as part of their commitment to progressive and anti authoritarian values, Pacifica Radio has not Obeyed in advance, at least to my knowledge, as the billionaire owners of the L. A. Times and the Washington Post have [00:34:00] demanded that their newspapers do. What happened at the Post and the L.
A. Times, writes Bunch, was a stunning betrayal of journalism's moral values. But in a strange way, he says, the papers did perform a public service, showing American voters what life under a dictator would feel like. Are American voters noticing? These reversals, he says, coming now, and coming from the poisoned heart of American oligarchy, have instead confirmed the worst fears among an anxiety wracked electorate.
That the core institutions that once saved U. S. democracy under the life or death pressures of Watergate, that would be the Supreme Court, Congress, and aggressive media, all have morally imploded into empty shells.
The editorial, page editor of the, of the LA Times, resigned in protest, [00:35:00] despite the horrendous journalism job market out there. Uh, two, at least two other colleagues have now joined her. Marielle Garza bravely said, I'm resigning because I want to make it clear that I am not okay with us being silent.
In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I'm standing up, she said. The Washington Post. For its part in its style section, confirm that, quote, the decision to no longer publish presidential endorsements was made by the posts owner. Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos.
As Will Bunch concludes at the Philly Inquirer, whose editorial board, by the way, on the same day as the news from the Washington Post endorsed Kamala Harris, they, had no fear of doing so on that very same day. he writes, This early sneak preview of what [00:36:00] dictatorship actually looks like is also providing the most important lesson we could have right now.
Which is how to not obey in advance, but stand up against strongmen and bullies. How all of us respond over the coming days and weeks will decide the fate of the First Amendment to the Constitution, freedom of the press, and maybe the future of the country,
The Trump White Supremacy Festival and Hootenanny Part 2 - The Muckrake Political Podcast - Air Date 10-29-24
TERRIBLE 'COMEDIAN': I welcome migrants to the United States of America with open arms, and by open arms I mean like this. It's wild. And these Latinos, they love making babies too, just know that. They do. They do. There's no pulling out. They don't do that. They come inside just like they did to our country. Republicans are the party with a good sense of humor. [00:37:00]
JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: No, they aren't. They, uh, Hinchcliffe would also go on to call Puerto Rico a floating island of garbage invoke about cutting watermelons with a Black attendee of the rally.
NICK HAUSELMAN - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: Oh, that one was a, uh, this chef's kiss. I think. Yeah. Good work. Um, you know, we've discussed this in the past. Gutenberg, not Gutenberg, Guttenfeld, Gutfeld? What's his name?
JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: Gutfeld.
NICK HAUSELMAN - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: Yes. You have this, these people that, uh, you know, try to be funny and because obviously most of the great comedians are on the other side, I think, right? It's kind of fair to say. And so they try and do their version and it's, um, and I think Trump is probably the top of the list, right?
He's the guy who wants to drink minimum and, you know, and And it's like, um, it's, it's just not, it's cruel. It's, you can't, you can't really mine comedy out of cruelty. You're not supposed to at least. And even when like Rickles could do that, but like he had a, he was, he was talented. And this guy is not.
JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: Yeah. You're not supposed to be punching down. You know, so, so making fun of people who are in the [00:38:00] crosshairs of an authoritarian movement doesn't, isn't really that funny and what actually happens here and sometimes comedy will do this, it will provide clarity. It was really, really a good move by Tony Hinchcliffe to make it.
Obvious what the Republican party actually believes. They don't care about, you know, conservativism. They don't, they don't care about family values. What they want to do is they want to hurt the people that they do not like, and that they do not see as humans. Um, this was some of the most unvarnished hate that we have seen.
And the, the, the issue here, Nick, and before we move on to other clips from this white power hootenanny to end all white power hootenannies is to point out. That while a lot of people are celebrating online is if this is somehow or another going to be a death knell towards the Trump campaign, or it's going to hurt his electoral chances, it's simply not.
You can say any of this, you can make any of these claims. You can, you know, traffic in racist stereotypes. It does not move the bottom line when it comes to Donald Trump, not even the beginning of a percentage point. [00:39:00]
NICK HAUSELMAN - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: Okay. But it might move the needle in terms of anybody of the undecided or people who might even have quite voted.
I don't know if anybody's even out there like that. Um, so that's what's interesting to me on that end. Um, but, but then if you look at the comments, I like to do that, right? I like to follow like what the response is to these kind of things. And it's like, so many of the people who are, you're talking about who are not swayed at all.
Um, it think it's like, it's a joke. He's a comedian. Is you guys don't have any, you don't have a sense of humor. What's wrong with you? Right? Like, what's wrong with us for not finding humor, uh, from something like that, or calling Puerto Rico a piece of trash? Um, for what it's worth, there's half a million Puerto Ricans that live in Pennsylvania.
Um, and what the early returns are, it seems to be, is that that is going to be, have an effect. This, that's what I've been seeing, like, you know, if we use Twitter, like if you listen to Musk right? That's the, the source of news. Um, it's possible. And there might be some Puerto Rican people of that heritage who [00:40:00] would, you know, figure out a ways to get more votes for, for Kamala Harris.
I don't know. You don't think so?
JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: No. And I, I, I think that, like, that is a, a comforting. Idea, particularly. I mean, we're going to do our election forecast in a while. And it is, uh, it is a really tense election coming up. I mean, whatever the truth is, Nick, if, you know, superstitions or sort of things like comfort people, that's totally fine.
But I think the really dire thing. Is to look at what happened at this rally. And I have now watched every second of it and have been repulsed by it. It it's really shocking by the way, that they decided to make their final appeal, the most like pure concentrated version of their hate and ugliness. That that was what they went with because it's been working for them.
Um, I, I, I don't think that this is necessarily going to hurt Donald Trump in some way, by the same fashion. For the record that the clip we're getting ready to listen to this from a preacher who at one point nick [00:41:00] Grabbed a crucifix and called on god to help donald trump and destroy their political enemies here He is, uh giving uh, you know his his idea of who kamala harris is
TERRIBLE 'COMEDIAN': In fact, she is the devil, whoever screamed that out.
She is the antichrist at her.
JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: She is the antichrist. She's the literal personification of evil who has been birthed into the world in order to destroy
NICK HAUSELMAN - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: Christendom. I'm so glad I watched the omen and started watching the omen too. So I know what he's talking about.
JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: Well, in case you wondered what else other people thought about the Democratic Party, here is another one of the speakers.
By the way, this thing went on for six hours. It's incredible. And, and, and, and quite frankly, it never ceases to shock here. Here is a, another, uh, look at what they think about the Democratic Party.
CLIP: She is some sick bastard that Hillary Clinton, huh? What a sick son of a bitch. The whole fucking [00:42:00] party, a bunch of degenerates, low lives, Jew haters, and low lives.
Every one of them. Every one of them.
JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: Do you ever think you'd hear a political campaign, like, turn towards this, Nick?
NICK HAUSELMAN - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: Well, he's off script, right, Jared?
JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: Oh, great. Cool. I assume he was drug off by a hook, right?
NICK HAUSELMAN - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: Uh, he's reading off a teleprompter, as I think they all were.
JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: Uh, oh, cool. Oh, great. Great.
NICK HAUSELMAN - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: Tells us that these were vetted. These were all speeches that were okayed. Um, you, you have to imagine that, you know, the kind of control that they have means that they would not let that, this kind of thing happen if they didn't approve it. But like, it's like what you said, so I've been saying for the last several weeks, this is, they, they, they.
The polls are telling them that they need to continue to do this. It's going to get worse, right? They're going to get even worse. I try to, I wish I could predict this accurately to figure out exactly what they're going to go do next, right? Because it's so bad as it is, but I don't, they're going to, there's going to, they're going to find another way to, you know, Think that they're gonna get an extra half a point off [00:43:00] of that.
There's a reason why this is in the A Block of today's show. This right here is yet another mile marker along the way to point out exactly what's happening to American politics. You and I started our discussion eight years ago, Nick, back in 2016 when I started reporting from Trump rallies. That's when we linked up and started talking about this thing.
And I said, you know what, over time, regardless of what happens in elections, this thing is going to continue to mutate. and worsen as radicalization and polarization worsen. What happens with that? Not only does hate become the main driving force of one of the main political parties, but you start to see this embrace of, of conflict politics.
And it isn't going to be the same old speeches. Like if this was Mitt Romney speaking a couple of days before, you know, the, the 20, uh, 2012 election, like you would not be hearing this. Right? Like this is down a path that is encouraging this and [00:44:00] incentivizing this. And what you just said is completely correct.
I can only imagine within the next week, we're going to hear something else that is even going to take what we saw at Madison Square Garden and, and honestly put that to shame or put it into new context.
Well, I wrote this down because the question hit me, uh, over the weekend. Uh, when you were looking at sort of what Michelle Obama was trying to say, or it was saying in her speech, and when you hear Kamala and Wallace talk, like, how are you supposed to sell decency?
To people who are fueled by anger and hate, you know, that's where we're at because what they're going to think is that decency and empathy are all weakness. And in this society, the way we've gotten to in a way that we were going toward that, a more empathetic place, we've the pushback probably in the same way that the pushback against like the counterculture movement swung us way back toward Reagan, like this swinging back again into the toxic masculinity of which we thought had been kind of Conquered, you know, uh, is really, um, [00:45:00] frustrating and troubling.
How Trump could steal the election - Today, Explained - Air Date 10-29-24
NOEL: You recently wrote a big piece called The Very Real Scenario where Trump Loses and Takes Power Anyway. And it starts with the claim If Donald Trump loses the election next week, he is going to challenge the results again. Why do you feel comfortable making such a claim?
KYLE: Well, first of all, that was the collective judgment of dozens of people we talked to about what they expected that scenario. But but really, the answer is almost obvious in that Donald Trump is essentially telling us that he has said he can't lose unless there's some kind of massive cheating by Democrats.
<CLIP> DONALD TRUMP: If the election's not rigged, we're going to win.
He's describing massive cheating by Democrats, even though it's not based on any real evidence.
<CLIP> DONALD TRUMP: We got to stop the cheating. If we stop that cheating, if we don't let them cheat, I don't even have to campaign anymore. We're going to win by so much.
And he’s expressed such supreme confidence that he's going to win. That is conditioning his supporters to believe that anything other than a win is stolen from him. So he's essentially saying it [00:46:00] almost explicitly and it's what we saw four years ago, so everyone expects it to recur.
NOEL: Politico did not write a similar piece about Kamala Harris. Why not?
KYLE: Similarly, the dozens of people we spoke to said, look, if Donald Trump wins the election, he wins. There's you know, you could you'll see some protests. You'll see some legal challenges in a really close state. But if Donald Trump is the winner, he's going to be the winner.
NOEL: All right. Let's go through the chronology as you laid it out in your story. You identified a bunch of discrete stages, starting with right about now, the end of October through November 11th. Where does the potential plan to steal the election start?
SCORING IN—STUDIOUS RED
KYLE: Well, what we said in the story was, you know, if you look at if you count this as step one or phase one, it's already underway. And that is this effort to condition as many people as possible to not trust the election results so that in the event Donald Trump loses, he'll be able to say, we can't believe the numbers that we're seeing. So that's happening that Donald Trump's talking about this new Democrats registering massive numbers of non-citizen voters trying to [00:47:00] solicit illegal votes from overseas.
<CLIP> DONALD TRUMP: Our elections are bad. And a lot of these illegal immigrants coming in, they're trying to get them to vote. They can't even speak English. They don't even know what country they're in practically. And these people are trying to get them to vote.
Again, No evidence of this. There are there are certain parts of the process that are being litigated, I think, in a more legitimate way about how, you know, the different safeguards and what the right safeguards are. But there's no evidence that there's some massive orchestrated plot to get thousands and thousands of unlawful people to register and vote. But he's saying that in part because it creates that noise and pressure that he needs for later phases of the process. So I think that's really step one. Step two is election night itself. When we expect and everyone we talk to expect Donald Trump to either declare victory or at the very least cast doubt if it seems like there's a Harris victory in the offing.
<CLIP> GLOBAL NEWS: It's the same playbook he used in 2016. and again in 2020, where he still refuses to admit he lost.
<CLIP> TRUMP AT DEBATE: [00:48:00] “if you look at the facts, I would love to have you do a special on it, you can look at georgia, I’ll show you Wisconsin, I’ll show you Pennsylvania..we have so many facts and statics but you know what? That doesn’t matter..
SCORING OUT
NOEL: Okay. Americans are on edge. We're suspicious. Half the country is suspicious in one direction, half in the other. Where does it go from there?
KYLE: So the next phase in the process after election night, you know, obviously, we'll see some states being called, we might see some states that are too close to call. It could be a couple of days before we get the final results. But assuming we're heading toward a Harris victory, it probably would be a very close one. But the next phase is for the state, county and state election boards to certify those results, canvass and certify the results. Four years ago, we saw Donald Trump try to intervene in that process, lean on allies and state and county boards and tell them not to certify.T hat didn't work. It didn't get him anywhere.
<CLIP>CBS NEWS: President Trump continued his [00:49:00] assault on a 2020 vote today. And oreven as he claimed total election corruption in Arizona…BRIAN KEMP: All 15 counties have certified their results. REPORTER: The state's Republican governor was certifying Biden's victory…
But in the intervening four years, we've seen a lot of turnover on these boards, and many of them are now populated with much closer allies.
<CLIP> DONALD TRUMP: I don't know if you've heard, but the Georgia state election board is in a very positive way. This is a very positive thing, Marjorie. They're on fire.
So if there's a state where Donald Trump wants to protest or reject or challenge the outcome using those boards, he can ask those same officials and make it a different result this time. Now, what's interesting about that is we talked to a lot of secretaries of state and other election chiefs in different states, and they said that's not going to amount to very much. They they will make a lot of noise, but we will go to court and force these boards to certify the election. In their view, that's sort of a successful outcome. But [00:50:00] if you're viewing this through the lens of Donald Trump and what he wants to accomplish, in some ways that's actually right on target because that gets him [to] say these state and county boards have been forced to certify an invalid election under pressure and duress by the courts, not because they think the election is legitimate. That's why I need help from other elected Republicans to reverse the outcome.
NOEL: All right, then the next state in your chronological timeline is December 11th. What goes on on December 11th?
KYLE: So that is a really important dividing line in this process. That is called the safe Harbor deadline. It's something set out in federal law that says states have to send their certified election results to the federal government by December 11th in order for the results in their electors to be counted. And so that's when you go from this sort of this very administrative process where you're just tabulating votes and certifying them, and then to the next phase, which is where you have state legislatures and ultimately Congress receiving those results and acting on [00:51:00] them. That's when the sort of the counting process is over and you're in this sort of political power process of this this entire situation.
NOEL: What did we see in 2020 that makes you think December 11th is such a key date here?
KYLE: Sure. So. So in 2020, I think what people didn't appreciate was that once the states certified and sent the results in Trump, Donald Trump was not going to be done trying to reverse his defeat. That was when the sort of pressure campaign really ramped up again on state legislatures.
SCORING IN—A SIMPLE REVENGE
<CLIP> PBS NEWSHOUR: The accusation, like much in the Trump case, is unique. Federal prosecutors point to these seven states which Trump lost, but where they allege he plotted to subvert the results with a false slate of electors…..
KY: E And this is interesting. And this was a process that was sort of overlooked in 2020 and now is very highly scrutinized. But state legislatures under the Constitution essentially have the power to decide who gets their presidential electors. [00:52:00] And now most constitutional experts say they've already made that choice. They've said it's a popular vote. and so the winner of the popular vote gets those electors. But what Donald Trump did was surround himself with a bunch of lawyers who adopted a sort of fringe theory and said those state legislatures can take that power back at any time. They can say we don't trust the election results. We think it's tainted by fraud and irregularities. And we actually want to decide immediately, you know, that we should appoint a different set of presidential electors and send those to Congress alongside the electors certified by the governor.That is the point in the process where that would happen. If the if the governor certifies a slate that Donald Trump disagrees with and he wants an alternative slate, he can lean on those state legislatures to do that.\
WARNING Trump's Threating to END Civil Liberties - Thom Hartmann Program - Air Date 10-31-24
THOM HARTMANN - HOST, THOM HARTMANN PROGRAM: Donald Trump represents an unprecedented threat to American civil liberties that could issue in [00:53:00] usher in a new era of racial violence, political tyranny. I think it's a legitimate warning. He writes, it is the We lead at our kitchen table and in our bedrooms that is most dangerously threatened by the tyranny that a return of Trump to power would represent.
This is the kind of tyranny that everyone who reads these words should fear most and work hardest to hold at bay. He notes that Trump has already begun to dismantle political protections that might prevent him from carrying out threats. This includes siccing the military on his perceived enemies, which could be you or me.
Aligning himself with dictators whose charm and patriotism he praises. Dismantling the civil service. And sacrificing American influence abroad by abandoning European allies. Edsel warned that one third of MAGA [00:54:00] Republicans expect imminent civil war. One third. More than half of MAGA Republicans say political violence is justified.
Nearly three quarters of MAGA Republicans believe that white people face discrimination and that there's a plot to replace white people in America. Which pretty much tells you, you know, why white people are supporting Donald Trump. Or why so many white people are supporting Donald Trump. It's all about white privilege.
We wanna keep our white privilege, don't you know? You know? The study says, uh, this is, you know, he's quoting a study here. He says, assessments by law enforcement experts in violent domestic extremism and prior research concern about the potential for political violence among MAGA Republicans appears to be justified.
Edsel notes that there are three protections against a president being out of control. Number one, White House advisors. [00:55:00] Two, the threat of impeachment, and number three, the threat of prosecution. Well, Trump is not going to have the same advisers again. He's not going to have John Kelly back. The threat of impeachment, he just shrugs because Republicans in the Senate won't convict him, so he doesn't care if he gets impeached in the House.
And the threat of prosecution? Ha! The Supreme Court did away with that. So, or at least six Republicans on the Supreme Court did away with that. John Kelly, per our song just a moment ago, is quoted in the Atlantic as saying that he wanted Donald Trump, excuse me, it's in Peter Baker and Susser Glaser's book, The Divider, Trump and the White House, that Trump asked John Kelly, a general, why can't my generals be more like Hitler's generals?
John Kelly tried to patiently explain to him that Hitler did what Hitler told them to do and it was a disaster. You know, attacking Russia, and as a [00:56:00] result, three times, Hitler's generals tried to, and he didn't believe it. He said, no, no, no, no, no, they were totally loyal to him. That's what Trump told John Kelly.
Meanwhile, over at Fox, Brian Kilmeade says if Trump becomes president and he gets generals like Hitler's generals, quote, that would be great. Seriously. This is Brian Kilmeade, quote, he would say it's not your job to rein in the president. It's your job to do what the president wants. It would be great to have German generals that actually do what we ask them to do.
Thank you, Fox News. We, we understand who you are and what you're all about.
Note from the Editor on how to feel about the road ahead
JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: We've just heard clips, starting with reveal, discussing the process of Elon Musk going manga. Five four explained to the war on labor, launched by mosque with others following his lead. The majority of report looked at Musk's election efforts through America pack the muck rake political podcast discussed the role of the billionaire elite in a fascist power [00:57:00] structure. The Brad cast also looked at the shifting power games among business elite Hedging ahead of a potential Trump presidency. The McCurry political podcast discussed Trump's Madison square garden rally. Anne's today explained, looked at the potential path for Trump to subvert the election results.
And those were just the top takes. There's a lot more in the deeper dive section, but first, a reminder that this show is supported by members who get access to bonus episodes, featuring the production crew here, discussing all manner of important and interesting topics often trying to make each other laugh in the process. To support all of our work and have those bonus episodes delivered seamlessly to the new members only podcast feed that you'll receive. Sign up to support the show at bestoftheleft.com/support. There's a link in the show notes. Through our Patreon page or from right inside the Apple podcast app. Members also get chapter markers in the show, but depending on the app use to listen, you may be able to use the time codes in our show notes to jump around the show, similar to chapter markers.
So check that out. If regular membership isn't in the cards for you. Shoot me an [00:58:00] email requesting a financial hardship membership because we don't let a lack of funds stand in the way of hearing more information. Now, before we continue on to the deeper dives, half. I just want to clarify a couple things, share some thoughts.
The first is that we are sharing everything we are sharing in the show today, not to frighten or depress, but to prepare. My hope is that if you're a listener of the show, You won't have been metaphorically holding your breath, leading up to election day. In the hope that a feeling of relief would be coming soon. And if you have been doing that, let me help reorient you. It's like the tunnel game when you're driving and you hold your breath as you go through, but we're not coming to the end of the tunnel here on election day, we are entering that tunnel right now.
And that tunnel is at least two months long. So be mentally and emotionally prepared for that. Of course, that's in the case of the Harris win and the election. If Trump pulls out another 2016 and eats out an electoral college [00:59:00] victory, Then the tunnel we're entering is much longer. Indeed. But I have thoughts on that too. The idea of entering a second Trump term And more broadly, a fully entrenched Trump era of the Republican party. Is as dark of a political possibility as most of us will have experienced in our lifetimes. You know, maybe all of us. I'm not here to downplay that in any way. It's a, certainly better to expect the worst. Which is absolutely what they're promising. Out loud with their own words. But just take a long view on various forms of dictatorship and authoritarian government. History is littered with examples of them coming to glorious ins. I tend to think of the major bridge in Lisbon Portugal.
I'm not even going to try the Portuguese pronunciation, but it's named the 25 day, uh, Breall bridge, April 25th bridge named for the date that their dictatorship was overthrown in 1974. [01:00:00] And whenever I think of. Either current present. Dictatorships in reality or theoretical future dictatorships and authoritarian governments.
I tend to end up thinking about that bridge because it reminds me of the limitations of dictatorship, the, you know, nature of them to very often be. Short-lived I mean, you know, like 20 years. For a dictatorship. As is normal but it's not a thousand years, which is how long they imagine they're going to last.
So take from that what you will, but the point being. These things come to an end and then everyone celebrates and puts up monuments, celebrating the end of their dictatorships and, you know, pulling away from that. Just more generally speaking about politics, you know, once you've been paying attention to politics long enough, it becomes easier to remember that no defeat is permanent. Just as no, when is either. Progress and progressivism is always about [01:01:00] the endless fight and can never be about achieving permanent victory. And so when I had that mental shift years ago, it really helped reorient me and my energies to, to not be in a perpetual state of disappointment that we hadn't yet achieved. Permanent victory or that. Permanent victory seemed to be. Getting pushed farther off and oh, well, well now it's going to take longer to get to that permanent victory.
That seems to be just over the horizon. No, it's not there. that's. What I learned and came to terms with is there is no permanent victory. Any time. Ever.
But in the same way, there's no permanent defeat either. So. Regardless of the length of the tunnel we're entering today, there will be a light at the end of it. We may be much worse for wear. Again, I am not downplaying the likely damage of a Trump presidency, mostly for our chances of addressing climate change.
If [01:02:00] nothing else. It's just that I find taking that long view can help give the strength to keep the fight alive day after day. In the present.
SECTION A - DEMOCRACY DYING IN DAYLIGHT
JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And now we'll continue to dive deeper on four topics. Next up section a democracy dying and daylight followed by section B actual election interference section. See Elon Musk, the billionaire and section D Trump. The fascist.
Ballots Burn in WA, OR; Billionaire WaPo, LATimes owners 'Obey in Advance Part 2 - The BradCast - Air Date 10-28-24
BRAD FRIEDMAN - HOST, THE BRADCAST: you know, I mentioned at the, uh, at the top of the show, uh, the importance of supporting, uh, whichever media outlet happens to be making the Bradcast available to you today. Well, uh, this news from Friday and over the weekend should make the necessity of that right now, the necessity of independent media, uh, right now, just one week away from election day, more than clear.
The Washington Post Post The newspaper with the now wildly and embarrassingly ironic [01:03:00] slogan, Democracy Dies in Darkness, a slogan by the way that was adopted by the paper after Donald Trump was elected to his first term in office, uh, that paper has decided it just can't make an endorsement this year in the presidential race.
It just can't choose between, uh, the sitting Vice President Kamala Harris and a guy whose own top White House advisors from the last time he served in the White House have repeatedly and loudly described him as a fascist. A man who kicked off his final week before Election Day with a rally on Sunday night that's being described today as Nazi esque.
Given the, uh, attacks on immigrants and the calls for mass deportations and one of the speakers who described Puerto Rico, an island, by the way, of U. S. citizens, as a, quote, island of garbage. Uh, this is, uh, this is the man that, [01:04:00] uh, held a rally, Donald Trump at Madison Square Gardens in New York City, the site of the infamous America First rally back in 1939 held at the time by the American Nazi party.
These similarities there were not lost on anybody, but sure. It's a tough call for Washington Post to make, uh, as to who they should endorse this year. The Los Angeles Times made the very same decision to not endorse either of the two presidential candidates late last week. In both cases, the decision, the cowardly decision, was made by its billionaire owners.
After the editorial boards at each of the otherwise highly regarded papers had already drafted their endorsements. In both cases, For Kamala Harris, as you also heard at the very top of the show, the world renowned us expert on fascism and tyrannical authoritarian regimes, Timothy Snyder. leads off his [01:05:00] landmark 2017 book titled On Tyranny with the most basic warning for how to respond to the rise, or the potential rise, of a, of a fascist regime.
Quote, Do not obey In advance, most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given, he notes in his now classic book. In times like these, he writes, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then they offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.
And yet, as our friend Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer, who happened to be on this program on, uh, on January 6, 2021, [01:06:00] when the man now running for president again on the Republican side, incited a violent attack on the U. S. Capitol and on the U. S. government himself in hopes of blocking the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in U.
S. history, that Will Bunch wrote at the Enquirer over the weekend, once upon a time, in a world that feels so very far away, stories of courage by the reporters, editors, and publisher at the Washington Post inspired a generation of young people to believe that journalism was a way, and maybe the best way, to change the world for good.
The pivotal scene, he notes, in the 1976 film, All the President's Men, which burnished both the facts and some legend about the Post, uh, their star reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, and their role in the Watergate scandal that took down Richard Nixon, that, uh, pivotal scene takes place in the dead of [01:07:00] night on the Pivotal Island.
pitch black lawn of the, uh, top editor at the paper, Ben Bradley. The two journalists fear they are being bugged and they relay their source deep throats warning that, quote, people's lives are in danger, maybe even ours. In a famous monologue, Bradley, played by the Oscar winner Jason Robards, tells Woodward and Bernstein to keep reporting the story, that, quote, nothing's riding on this except the First Amendment to the Constitution, freedom of the press, and maybe the future of the country, adding his trademarked newsroom cynicism, quote, Not that any of that matters.
Yet perhaps an even more revealing scene, notes Bunch, occurs earlier in the film when Nixon's campaign manager, John Mitchell, called by the reporters for his comment on a damning article, instead issues a warning to the Post's trailblazing publisher at the time, saying, quote, Katie Graham's gonna get [01:08:00] her He used a crude word for breast.
Caught in a big fat ringer if that story's published. Well, Kathryn Graham's post had a lot at stake. Federal regulators could have stripped her company's lucrative TV licenses, for instance, at the time. And yet both the story and the quote Minus the T word, were in fact published in The Post, which ended up winning a Pulitzer Prize for its relentless pursuit of Watergate.
These are the stories, Will Bunch notes, that journalists tell ourselves in order to live. So much so, that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos Felt compelled when he bought the post from Graham's heirs in 2013 to invoke them to reassure the newsroom that he would never diminish the post's reputation for courageous journalism.
The 200 [01:09:00] billion dollar man at the time wrote in a letter to staffers quote, Well, I hope no one ever threatens to put one of my body parts through a ringer. If they do, thanks to Mrs. Graham's example, I will be ready. Will Bunch notes, Jeff Bezos was lying. On Friday, the world's richest, third richest person, his scandal scarred British publisher, Will Lewis, and the iconic newspaper they control, stunned both the American body politic and the media world by spiking their own editorial board's endorsement of Kamala Harris for president.
Just days ahead of an election defined by her rival, Donald Trump's increasing threats to impose a tyrannical form of government With mass deportation camps and arrests for his growing enemies lists, including, yes, journalists,
the, uh, [01:10:00] Lewis's, uh, this is the, uh, the publisher Lewis's utterly incoherent defense of the decision ending a tradition of presidential endorsements they post launched in 1976. The very same year that All the President's Men was released did nothing to quell the rampant, informed speculation that his boss, Jeff Bezos, had killed the already drafted editorial out of fear of a revenge minded Trump 47.
Who could terminate the billionaire's extensive business dealings with the federal government. It seemed all too fitting then that Donald Trump was in Austin, Texas, meeting executives of Jeff Bezos space venture, Blue Horizon, at the very same time that the Washington Post kiboshed the endorsement. That space company, uh, owned by Jeff Bezos, already has contracts for billions of dollars with the federal government.[01:11:00]
And many other such contracts as well, all of which, well, depending on who wins the next presidential election, could simply go away. Will Bunch notes, if this looks like the latest saga of open corruption in a nation that's become a billionaire kleptocracy, it is. But this moment is also so much more than that.
He says America is witnessing the raw power of dictatorship just days before voters even decide if that will truly be our future path. He is obeying fascism in advance.
TYT Explodes Over Calling Trump 'Fascist' - The Majority Report - Air Date 11-1-24
ANNA KASPARIAN: Donald Trump is deeply racist, and he says deeply racist things, okay? I want to make a distinction between Donald Trump, the person who says and does racist things, and the notion of a fascist.
Because look, if we're just going to use fascist toward anyone we dislike, we're going to be Alright, then the word doesn't actually mean anything. Okay,
CENK UYGUR: what do you want me to say, Anna? You want me to say wannabe dictator? Sure, you can say [01:12:00]
ANNA KASPARIAN: wannabe dictator, but I don't even think he wants to be a dictator.
Of course he does! That's what you do when you lose an election and you go,
CENK UYGUR: oh, I've got to convince the electors and I'd like to change the Constitution and bring out the tanks and use martial law against American citizens and shoot protesters. I mean, if that's not fascist, then I guess the word just shouldn't exist.
ANNA KASPARIAN: Was he able to do those things?
CENK UYGUR: First of all, his entire cabinet had to threaten, not cabinet, administration, his White House team, had to say we're all going to mass resign if you roll out tanks against American citizens. Okay, so
ANNA KASPARIAN: if you think he's a fascist, wouldn't that justify taking physical action against him?
CENK UYGUR: No, because that doesn't help, that devolves us further into fascism. Whoa, what a straw man. Can you pause it actually?
EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: There's a difference between somebody I guess I didn't see that part, but what, I mean, If you're a
MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: fascist, why aren't you, uh, What is the guy who tried to kill Hitler? Uh, Ribbentrop I mean, It's
EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: a way to continue to delegitimize what Cenk is saying there, and Cenk is absolutely right.
I mean, look, if she wants a definition, uh, [01:13:00] Fascism's a political ideology that started as an outgrowth of Mussolini and Hitler's reigns at the start of the 20th century. You can characterize it as highly militaristic, I don't think. Nationalistic, anti democratic, a political movement that encourages violence, um, uh, against leftists, um, against, um, uh, LGBTQ people, um, minority groups, sorry, what'd you say, Brandon?
I said
BRANDON SUTTON: marginalized groups, yeah. Go ahead. Marginalized
EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: groups, right? Or anyone that's opposing you and, you know, that can involve, like, um, a, a consolidation of power for the wealthy, I mean, the, the definitions of fascism are quite well established, but forced deportation. Like, that's unequivocally what Donald Trump and J.
D. Vance are proposing there, is unequivocally a fascist policy. So, to basically And it's
MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: demographically motivated as well, despite the, like, National Socialist gloss that they give to it.
EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: So, so, so, I found that fascinating and depressing to see how, okay, he's not a fascist, or, when you make these claims, like, that [01:14:00] goes too far is basically what her contention is.
And then, um, Um, she asked was he able to do any of those things, and the point is that, like, yeah, he was thwarted. But apparently you're only a fascist if you win. Let's give him some more reps at it. Saga and Jenny
MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: make the same point. Like, well, he didn't, he couldn't really do it, and he didn't really do it, but let's give him four more years to try knowing what he knows now.
Are you fucking stupid? Yeah. It's such
BRANDON SUTTON: a moving goalpost, too, because it goes from, like, okay, he's not, He's not in favor of those things to like, okay, yes, he is in favor of those things, but he wasn't able to do them. And you see like Republicans whose main role it is to like run interference for Trump, who are more media savvy, play this, like, Picard all time was like, he's just saying those things to trigger lip.
He's like, okay, well, we have evidence of him trying to do those things, like actually try to, you know, And that's what he says, they go, okay, but he wasn't able to do it. It's like, that's, you know, you can't, you can't fight with that. Cause until he does it, then suddenly it's not like, there's no provable point.
It's the same argument people make about Israel's genocide in Palestine, where it's like, there are still some Gazans alive. [01:15:00] So it can't be genocides. Like that's not how it works. And I would also just point out, you know, you can read Umberto Eco about fascism, but when you're talking about neo fascism or at least fascism that takes place in the aftermath of Nazi Germany, in the aftermath of.
Italian Mussolini fascism. You have to understand that fascists are able to disguise fascism better because they understand that fascism is simply not popular. You know, there is a reason why, even people on the right, when they're accusing socialists of, you know, being, Uh, anti liberal or illiberal, use the word fascist because they know fascism as a political project has been extremely delegitimized due to the many, many Or the word Nazi,
EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Brandon.
Yeah, Nazi. Right, like these right wingers, so many of these people that are actual Nazis in terms of the, the core of their ideology, but they won't brand themselves as that in public at the very least.
BRANDON SUTTON: They'll try to brand Nazis as socialists, they'll be like, oh, they were national socialists, a complete canard, a complete red herring.
But, you know, you just have to be aware that neo fascists nowadays understand [01:16:00] that what they are preaching is not popular, and that's why they have to launder it into modern, you know, mainstream political discourse with any number of just like, sleights of hand that help them, you know, escape that.
Identification. But Trump isn't able to do that. He just says straight up fascist stuff and then people who are defending him have to try to launder it or disguise it as something different than it is.
MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Yeah, and you know, I've, I've, on Left Reckoning, we've talked a lot about, um, the definition of fascism and that sort of thing, and Robert Paxton is another definition of fascism that I think pretty much, uh, indicts Trump, uh, and he, he traces it back to the Klan as like a early form of neo fascism.
Um, Richard Evans is a historian who makes that point about a militaristic society being a difference between, uh, the original fascists and now, and I think that sort of taxonomy
But this thing where it's mainly about you're too alarmed, uh, is a big problem for me and I don't, uh, think it's, uh, you know, well founded.
EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: And even under [01:17:00] that definition, in terms of the militarism, you could make a case for neo fascism and the, with the level of armaments that, like, a certain level of our population has, um, if you wanted to basically say that they could be, you know, Galvanized into some sort of, uh, action against the groups that are being targeted.
I think that's a very fair, uh, academic perspective on fascism. Um, but yeah, just the claim essentially that it's hysterical to make these, uh, accusations or to call him a fascist. Well, I would say that, uh, a conversation between, uh, Mark Milley and Anna is in order or with these other Trump administration officials that have said his former chief of staff, The very same things where they don't have an incentive to do so in any regard.
They're just saying what they heard. We know from Ivana Trump's, uh, divorce proceedings that he, at least she claimed that he had a speech of, uh, Hitler's is a
MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: sequel to Mein Kampf is how it was marketed, which is the speeches of Adolf [01:18:00] Hitler, right? And that is, seems to be, I mean, if she made that, if she made that, If she made that detail up, she had a great divorce lawyer because it probably said like, Oh, Mein Kampf is too obvious.
Go with this. No, I think it's probably because Trump did have a collection of Hitler speeches on his bedside table. But,
EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: but that's
BRANDON SUTTON: what Mein Kampf is too mainstream. He's more of a Hitler deep cuts. B sides. B sides.
EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: But, but like what adds credibility to her claim is what we've heard from like people that worked with him and what he says in private and then what he says in public.
So the question is, how much Like, how credulous are you going to be to these right wingers? And it seems that she's made an assessment that at this point, that, uh, she lends them a lot of credence, and gives them a lot of flexibility in terms of, like, what they claim publicly, matching what they claim in private, and what that political ideology really means for people in this country.
And so, um, I found that despicable, to be honest with you. Um, and, uh, You know, it's [01:19:00] all doing whatever you want because you feel like it's better for your career makes total sense, but to downplay the threat of Trump, especially in after what we saw at the Madison Square Garden rally, which was an attempt to, uh, gesture towards the bun, the Nazi rally of 85 years ago, um, to downplay that in this moment, I feel like is a real disservice and frankly, irresponsible, uh, to do that and communicate that with your audience.
SECTION B - ACTUAL ELECTION INTERFERENCE
JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Now entering section B. Actual election interference.
How Trump could steal the election Part 2 - Today, Explained - Air Date 10-29-24
NOEL: What happened with the fake electors after the 2020 election?
KYLE: So this is interesting. So in 2020, no state legislature did this. Trump wanted them to. He asked them to over and over again. And they all said, show us your evidence of fraud and we'll think about it. And he can never get them anything that was remotely convincing. And so the state legislatures balked. This is sort of similar to what I said earlier. A lot of those state legislators who stood in his way four years ago are gone and have been replaced by much more compliant, closer Trump allies. That's number one. [01:20:00] Number two is what Trump did four years ago with appoint or have his campaign essentially in the state Republican parties assemble slates of active Republican activists who called themselves legitimate presidential electors, signed documents saying they were legitimate presidential electors but were not. And they sent those documents to Congress. And what happened was a lot of the people got charged with crimes for signing false documents.
<CLIP> FOX 13 NEWS: 16 people in Michigan now facing felony charges for acting as fake electors for Donald Trump during the 2020 presidential election.
And it amounted to nothing because Mike Pence, then presiding over Congress, refused to even recognize them. They had no legitimacy at all. What we point out in the story is if a slate of electors is backed by their legislature, it's a little bit of a different story. They actually have some legitimacy in the sense that a government authority has given them its backing. That was the big thing that was missing in [01:21:00] 2020. Could Donald Trump get legislatures to do in 2024 what they wouldn't do in 2020? That could actually change the equation a little bit.
NOEL: And if he did, if he was able to do that in 2024 this year, what would happen next?
KYLE: I mean, then you're going to Congress. Congress receives electors that, you know, after they meet the electors meet on December 17th this year and cast their ballots and send those ballots to Washington. If there are competing slates of electors endorsed by state legislatures, presumably they would meet too, And similarly send their documents to Congress. So when Congress starts counting electors, you may get to a state that has two slates. Now, that presents a sort of unprecedented controversy that we haven't really seen, where you have two government backed slate of electors that come before Congress at the same time. Now, one of the things that's also happened since 2020 is a federal law was passed by Congress and Joe Biden that tries to prevent this [01:22:00] scenario basically puts a heavy thumb on the scale in favor of the electors backed by the governor. But there is an open constitutional question about whether state legislatures do have that authority. And it would certainly have to go to court and be back. And it'd be a big battle over whether those alternate electors would also have to be considered by Congress.
NOEL: And and and, as you said, control of who controls Congress would really matter here.
KYLE: This, to me is is probably the most important question of all: who controls Congress? You know, after the votes are counted on Election Day and the days thereafter, because if you have a Democratic-led Congress, number one, Kamala Harris is going to be the one presiding over the January 6th session where they count electors. And so even if she had to introduce a slate backed by a state legislature, there's no universe in which Congress is going to count that alternate slate for Donald Trump in a state where Harris was the popular vote winner. It just doesn't, it doesn't compute. And so if [01:23:00] Democrats control the House and even if they narrowly lose the Senate, but you have senators like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski and others who have been averse to these efforts by Donald Trump, you are not going to see this plan go anywhere. If you have a Republican House, that's when you get into some of these sort of wild scenarios where where this effort could still succeed.
NOEL: The final date in your timeline is January 6th. Close listeners of the podcast may recall what happened four years ago on January 6th. What would an attempted steal look like on January 6th, 2025?
KYLE: So assuming you have a Republican Congress, assuming all these other steps in the process, go as you sort of again, very hypothetical for many reasons, but that's when you get wild scenarios.
SCORING IN—A SIMPLE REVENGE
It depends on who's the speaker. Is Mike Johnston going to be speaker again? But let's assume that he is the speaker and that he is totally on board with any effort by Trump to continue challenging the election as late as January 6th. Well, then you have [01:24:00] you have to have a situation where Mike Johnson says the federal law that passed in 2022 to prevent these election challenges. I don't think it's constitutional. I don't think it binds Congress because if it does bind Congress, then we have to basically accept the results certified by the governors. If we don't accept that it binds Congress, then we have a much messier situation where we may have to think about these legislatively endorsed electors. We may not have to accept the process for challenging electors and which ones we're supposed to accept. We can actually prevent Congress from counting electors for Kamala Harris. And if we prevent both either candidate from reaching 270 electoral votes, then the election goes to the House. But in a weird sort of way, where instead of a just a majority vote, it's actually a vote by state where each state gets one vote. And that process favors Republicans pretty heavily. And so that's the scenario. That's sort of the ultimate [01:25:00] capper on this. If you get to that contingent election, they call it, you probably have a Donald Trump presidency.
SCORING
Ballots Burn in WA, OR; Billionaire WaPo, LATimes owners 'Obey in Advance Part 3 - The BradCast - Air Date 10-28-24
BRAD FRIEDMAN - HOST, THE BRADCAST: I'll get to the billionaire endorsement business. Uh, I'll get back to that or, or, or, or lack thereof. Momentarily, but we've got some breaking news today that I need to quickly wave at, at least in that, of course, uh, we may cover in more detail on the broadcast, uh, throughout the coming days as the final week before election is now, uh, underway.
And well, uh, literally in this case, heating up quickly, we reported on an incident last week in Phoenix, Arizona, where someone had set a U. S. Postal Service collection box on fire, burning at least 20 mail in. absentee ballots in the bargain. And now it has, guess what happened again and in two different states this time, not to a us postal service box, but to a ballot drop boxes with hundreds of ballots in them.[01:26:00]
According to KGW eight out of Portland today, hundreds of ballots were destroyed in a ballot box fire. In Vancouver, Washington, early Monday morning and another ballot box fire in Portland, Portland, Oregon, which destroyed in that case, just three ballots where apparently there was a fire suppressant inside the ballot drop box.
Now I thought I knew a lot about elections. I did not know that some ballot drop boxes apparently have a fire suppressants in them. That's good. Uh, and, and, you know, I'm glad to hear it. If so, unfortunately, apparently not in that one in Washington state. However, Vancouver police, uh, responded around 4 AM to a, on Monday to a reported arson at a ballot box on Southeast 164th Avenue near Fisher's Landing Parkway.
Transit Depot. I'm giving that very specific address, uh, because we have quite a few listeners in both [01:27:00] Washington and Oregon. And in case you or anyone, you know, might have used that specific drop box, uh, and may need now to vote again to replace a damaged ballot. Well, if you voted at Southeast 164th Avenue.
Uh, the officers found a, quote, suspicious device next to the ballot box, which was smoking and on fire, according to Vancouver Police. Clark County Auditor Greg Kimsey told KGW that hundreds of ballots were severely burned, many of which were destroyed. Uh, KGW is the NBC affiliate in Portland. The Clark County auditor told the outlet that anyone who dropped off a ballot in that box after 11 AM on Saturday should contact the election division at 564 397 2345 or go to, or email elections at clark.[01:28:00]
wa. gov. The office of the secretary of state in Washington said the, uh, Clark County auditor's office will quote work diligently to make sure any impacted voters receive replacement ballots before the November 5 general election in a state which votes almost entirely by mail, or in this case, via Dropbox.
Voters may check their ballot status online at vote WA. gov to track, uh, its return status. That's a good idea wherever you may vote to track that ballot. If the jurisdiction you're voting in allows you to do ballot tracking for absentee and mail in ballots and so forth. I know we do that here in Los Angeles.
If a return ballot, they note, is not marked as received, voters can print a replacement ballot in Washington, in Vancouver, or visit their local election department for a replacement, according to the Secretary of State's office. [01:29:00] Secretary of State Steve Hobbs said, quote, uh, we will not tolerate threats or acts of violence that, uh, Seek to undermine the democratic process, adding quote, I strongly denounce any acts of terror that aim to disrupt lawful and fair elections in Washington state.
He said, despite this incident, I have complete confidence in our county election officials ability to keep Washington's elections safe and secure for all voters. The FBI is said to be investigating the incident in the democratic leaning state and around three 30 a. m. More. Uh, also on Monday, security at the Multnomah County Elections Division notified Portland, Oregon police that they responded to a fire at a nearby ballot box on Southeast Morrison Street.
Security personnel extinguished the fire in that case before officers even arrived. Portland police determined an incendiary device was put inside the ballot box to ignite that [01:30:00] fire again in another Democratic stronghold. As mentioned, a fire suppressant inside that ballot box, in that case, helped protect the ballots, according to the, uh, county, and only three ballots were damaged.
The election division will contact those three voters so they can receive replacement ballots. Late on Monday, Uh, Monday afternoon, AP was reporting that police now say they have identified what they describe as a suspect vehicle connected to the incendiary devices that set fires to those ballot drop boxes in both states.
So it sounds like it could be the same person, uh, who carried out both terrorist attacks, which is what this really is. Of course, we will keep our eyes on this story and other acts of terrorism meant to disrupt.
But I will take this opportunity again to recommend that voters who choose to vote by mail, uh, by [01:31:00] mail in absentee ballot in any state for any reason, that if you do so, please try to hand deliver those ballots, if possible, to a precinct or a voting center or a municipal election headquarters as allowed in your particular jurisdiction.
I always recommend that anyway, frankly. But of course, given the news, uh, today and, and last week and what is becoming a troubling pattern, I'm going to double down on that advice. Try to hand that ballot, uh, to a person or to a box that is being watched by, uh, a person. If you must use a postal service box, uh, the USPS advises that you do so before the last collection time of the day, which is marked on the box.
Uh, and with election drop boxes, uh, you know, do so during business hours. Again, If possible, uh, that's probably wise this year for what is quickly becoming obvious reasons. That said, if putting your ballot into a [01:32:00] mailbox or a drop box is the only way that you are able to cast your vote this year, do it and do it soon.
And don't be cowed by terrorists. And don't obey in advance, as you heard discussed at the top of the show, and as I'll discuss a bit more momentarily. Yes, your vote does count and will be counted as cast, at least if I and a few million other Americans have anything to say about it.
Little Secret Elie Mystal on Trump's Likely Plan to Steal Election with GOP House Speaker Johnson - Democracy Now! - Air Date 11-1-24
DONALD TRUMP: You know, with me, we’ve got to get the congressmen elected, and we’ve got to get the senators elected, because we can take the Senate pretty easily. And I think with our little secret, we’re going to do really well with the House, right? Our little secret is having a big impact. He and I have a secret. We’ll tell you what it is when the race is over.
AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: “He and I have a secret. We’ll tell you what it is when the race is over.” And clearly, President Trump is concerned. Pieces in The Washington Post, Politico, Politico headlined [01:33:00] “Trump lagging in early vote with seniors in Pennsylvania, a red flag for GOP.”
For more, we go to Elie Mystal. He is author of Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution.
Elie, welcome back to Democracy Now! OK, what is this “little secret”?
ELIE MYSTAL: Yeah, so, it’s really the 12th Amendment. One of the reasons you have to ask yourself: Why is Donald Trump and this group of MAGA people stomping around the country calling Puerto Ricans garbage and generally acting like they don’t need to get any more votes to win the presidency? And the reason why they think that they don’t need any more votes is — comes from the 12th Amendment. The 12th Amendment is where you get to these contingent election scenarios. What the 12th Amendment says is that the winner of the presidency is determined by whoever has a majority of the electoral votes among the electors appointed, right? And that’s the key phrase. If you do not get to a majority among the electors [01:34:00] appointed, then you kick it to the House, and that’s where you have the contingent election, where, importantly, the House votes based on its own state delegation. So, basically, every state gets one vote. Currently, there are 26 delegations that are Republican, 24 Democrat, so Trump would win in that contingent election of the House.
But that’s not the secret. The secret is that if you decrease the number of electors appointed — right? — the math is simple that the majority of electoral votes that you need also goes down. So, in a very simple case where we think it is — you need 270 electoral votes to win, if there are 538 total electors. But if you take that number down to, say, 528 electors, well, then, all of a sudden, you only need 264 electoral votes to win, right? And you can do that, you can decrease the number of electors appointed, if [01:35:00] you prevent, delay, obfuscate the ability of any particular state to certify its elections and send electors to Congress by the statutorily required deadline of December 11th.
And so, Amy, I think that’s where this whole game is going to be played by Trump and Johnson. They’re going to try to prevent states from submitting — states that Harris wins from submitting valid slates of electors by the December 11th deadline. And then, once we get to that deadline, Mike Johnson, as speaker of the House, and Republicans in control of the House, will simply call the process over and say any electors not appointed by the statutory deadline of December 11th simply don’t count. And that is a way for Trump to steal an election that he loses.
AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: And for people who are watching this globally, Elie, for people who don’t understand the Electoral College — and there are movements to change it, like the [01:36:00] National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, designed to ensure that the candidate who received the most votes nationwide is elected president, would come into effect only when it could guarantee that outcome. What this system is that we have, that they’re finagling with right now?
ELIE MYSTAL: Yeah. So, for people who are not from America, who are, like, trying to figure out what’s going on, I believe the scientific term for the Electoral College is “stupid.” Right? The Electoral College is anti-democratic and dumb. If you’re living in some other country and you have been told that America is the greatest democracy on Earth, you have been sold a lie. We are not the greatest democracy on Earth. We are not even a true democracy, because of the Electoral College, right? The Electoral College, which has always been a part of our history of our nation, it’s always been part of the structure of the government, is fundamentally an anti-democratic system for the single [01:37:00] elected official, the single representative that is supposed to be elected by all the people in the United States, right? Everybody else, it’s based on their county, their town, their state. The president of the United States is the one official that’s supposed to be elected by everybody, but he’s actually elected by — he or she, one day hopefully soon, is elected by nobody, because of the Electoral College. It is a ridiculous system.
It’s an anachronistic system, basically, like so much else in the Constitution, made to — it’s another one of those poison pills the enslavers put into the original Constitution in hope that it would make it very difficult for slavery to ever be outlawed in this nation. And while we overcame slavery, its fundamental structure of allowing for minoritarian white rule is still in place, and we still see the effects. And that’s what we’re looking at in this election.
You got to remember, Donald Trump is most likely — you know, regardless of what happens on Tuesday in the [01:38:00] Electoral College, Donald Trump is almost certainly going to lose the popular vote for the third time. For the third time in a row, this man will have a minority of the popular vote, yet still could be president, either by winning the Electoral College outright or by gaming the system as I’ve outlined in my piece in The Nation.
AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Tell us more about what you wrote about deadlines, that what this means is that Republicans just have to delay long enough to pass those deadlines. They don’t have to win; they just have to stall. And we’re seeing more and more across this country these complicated local election laws that have to do with counting. You know, we’re doing an election special at night, an election special the next morning, when we very possibly might not know what the election results are, even the next morning.
ELIE MYSTAL: Yeah, delay, delay, delay is the name of the game for the [01:39:00] Republicans. Statutorily speaking, electors have to be submitted to Congress by December 11th. Statutorily speaking, those electors have to vote and then submit their votes on who the president should be by December 25th, Christmas Day, because we are that kind of stupid, right? January 3rd is when the new House takes office. That’s a constitutional deadline, so no shenanigans are applicable there. And January 6th, as the violent MAGA people know, is the date when the House certifies the results of the Electoral College vote. But that day is largely ceremonial. Even Mike Pence understands that date is largely ceremonial. The real action is on December — is between December 11th, when the electors are appointed, and December 25th, when they’re supposed to be done voting.
Now, those deadlines are statutory. That means they can be changed. And if you roll the tape back to 2020, when Nancy Pelosi is the speaker of the House and the Democrats control the House, one would imagine that if [01:40:00] states had gotten cute with their delaying submitting their slates of electors, Nancy Pelosi would have just extended the deadline. But this is why Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is critical to Trump’s secret plan to steal the election, because if Mike Johnson is in charge, which he absolutely will be — even if Democrats win the House, Mike Johnson is in charge on December 11th. If he’s in charge then, he could not move the deadline, essentially, and declare the process over.
Now, let’s say Democrats win the House, right? Let’s say January 3rd, Democrats come in, Hakeem Jeffries is the new speaker of the House. Could the Democrats undo what Mike Johnson has done on December 11th and December 25th? Maybe. But as my colleague John Nichols just reminded us all, Democrats probably ain’t going to control the Senate on January 3rd. So, you generally need a bicameral proposition to move deadlines like [01:41:00] that. You’re probably not going to have the Senate, even if the Democrats win the House.
SECTION C - ELON MUSK THE BILLIONAIRE
JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: \ Up next section. See Elon Musk, the billionaire.
Why Elon Musk Went Full MAGA Part 2 - Reveal - Air Date 10-30-24
ANNA MERLAN: So yeah, for the last 10 years, I have been pretty focused on conspiracy theories in American life. And of course, the common definition of a conspiracy theory is a belief that a group of people are working together to hide a consequential secret or to seize power, for instance.
So I spend a lot of time covering conspiracy communities, what they believe and sort of how it drives them to make. Uh, the decisions that they make about how to live their lives.
AL LETSON - HOST, REVEAL: So, Elon Musk has been in our lives for a long time. Um, and you know, I mean, my first remembrance of Elon Musk is basically Tesla, electric cars.
The first time he came on my radar, he was a tech bro. He was like working in tech. Everyone was saying he was a founder of this great new company, which he wasn't actually the founder. He just [01:42:00] ran the company. But I think back then I thought of him as leaning a little bit left and then he buys Twitter.
And even before he bought Twitter, you could see the gradual shift in who the, the person that we know as Elon Musk became. Um, I'm curious if you have any idea, like, what his red pill moment was.
ANNA MERLAN: Yeah, you know, there's been a lot of reporting about this because it has been so consequential. Like a lot of very rich people, Musk always went back and forth in who he supported and who he made campaign donations to, you know, he made donations to Hillary Clinton.
Um, he and President Trump feuded for years, but there has been a pretty noticeable rightward shift in his politics. And like for a lot of very wealthy people, it seems like it accelerated during the pandemic. A lot of these folks were sort of faced with [01:43:00] A level of government, what they saw as intrusion in their lives that they were not used to and became openly skeptical about things like vaccines, which mask has tweeted skeptically about quite a bit.
Um, so we saw not just mess, but a lot of other people in the tech space kind of accelerate a skepticism about government and. to some degree, like a skepticism about liberal democracy. So there have been a bunch of moments like this for Musk. You know, one was around COVID. Another was around what he calls illegal immigration, which he is, um, increasingly concerned with.
And a third is about trans people, gender affirming care, gender affirming medication. These are all things that he has expressed an increasing amount of concern about over the years, and that has found him a lot of new supporters on the right, both in politics and sort of elsewhere.
AL LETSON - HOST, REVEAL: So, as he's [01:44:00] beginning this rightward shift, uh, where does the acquisition of Twitter fit in all that?
ANNA MERLAN: Yeah, so Musk ended up buying Twitter, um, in, I believe, October of 2022. Uh, and this was a pretty big surprise. It didn't actually seem like he could pull it off. He had to get a lot of financing to do it. Um, and Musk has said many times that one of his interests in buying Twitter was that he believed that it was no longer a free speech platform and that it was suppressing, you know, disfavored views of conservative.
People and players. Um, and of course, this is something that like Republican politicians have claimed for years. Um, and so he spoke a lot about wanting to make Twitter into a free speech platform again, as he put it. Um, and in practice, what that's meant is, It's bringing back folks who are banned previously for doing things like spreading misinformation, uh, fomenting threats.
A lot of those users have been brought back on mass, you know, people like Alex Jones [01:45:00] who were expected to stay off the platform forever. Um, and then of course, as we've seen accelerate recently, becoming a huge spreader himself of what most people would agree is mis and disinformation. Especially around immigration and now around election fraud.
He's become very, very concerned about, uh, election fraud.
AL LETSON - HOST, REVEAL: It's striking to me that right before he bought Twitter, he was talking a lot about free speech and how he was the free speech guy and he just wanted to, you know, buy the platform to restore free speech. And then he got the platform and started banning people that said anything negative about him, essentially trampling down on free speech.
ANNA MERLAN: Yeah, the irony of those bans has been noted, though to be fair, a lot of those people end up Getting to come back ultimately like a recent one was the journalist Ken Klippenstein who was briefly banned and then eventually brought back But all of this kind of [01:46:00] points to the same thing Which is that Twitter under Elon Musk or X as he now calls it is his platform his rules go his decisions They do not have to be consistent.
They just have to be his which of course has concern Free speech advocates, federal regulators, like there's been a lot of concern about a very, very powerful platform, um, controlled by the whims of one guy.
The Trump White Supremacy Festival and Hootenanny Part 3 - The Muckrake Political Podcast - Air Date 10-29-24
JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: But what you just said is apt and it's correct. Nick, I started talking about this in 2016 precisely because I wanted to avoid this moment. Where we are right now, watching this rally, watching Trump, watching the 2024 election, I wanted to avoid the possibility that we would arrive at this point. I wanted to avoid the major conflict.
I wanted to diffuse it before we got there. And unfortunately, history shows us how these cycles work. So, for instance, historical context in all of this. This is not the first time that we've had a fascist rally in Madison Square Garden. In 1939, the German American Bund held a Nazi [01:47:00] rally at Madison Square Garden that included over 20, 000 people in attendance.
For those who haven't seen footage of this or heard stories about it, it included a picture of George Washington surrounded by Nazis. It was a Almost verbatim, the rhetoric that was on display at this Donald Trump rally, just with some rhetorical flourishes here and there that hid the expressive fascistic ideas.
The entire point is this, this is not something that goes away. This is something that cycles around. And this actually, and, and I, Nick, I'll be honest with you. I find it hard to believe that this rally happened, you know, what, 75 years. After this rally with the, the German American bun, I have to imagine it's not a coincidence that this is something within the Trump, Trump campaign, Trump campaign, the Trump campaign that recognize the, the historical parallels of this thing.
And if you don't believe me, here's a clip from Donald Trump who is making one of his final pushes and appeals to the American voters. [01:48:00]
DONALD TRUMP: Get your husband off the couch. The football game doesn't mean a damn thing. You gotta get out and vote. Get up, Harry. Come on, Harry. Get up, Harry. Let's go. You're gonna vote for the president, Harry.
We're gonna save our country. For the past nine years, we have been fighting against the most sinister and corrupt forces on Earth. With your vote in this election, you can show them once and for all that this nation does not belong to them. This nation belongs to you.
JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: So to believe that all this is a coincidence is also to believe that this rhetoric, the idea that Trump is fighting sinister forces, that the press are the enemies of the people and that they are battling an enemy from within.
They just are accidentally completely mirrors of fascist Nazi rhetoric. Like we're supposed to believe that that's what's happening, as opposed to people within the Trump campaign and the Trump circle studied these things, understand their rhetorical appeal, and [01:49:00] understand how they can lead to electoral victory.
It's not even a contest. It's obvious that this is a chosen, chosen display.
NICK HAUSELMAN - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: For sure. And, you know, there are probably problems that we have with the constitution and laws and issues that we would like to change, but you know, you have to imagine that the founders also, while it's not that explicit, the press were sort of like the fourth coequal branch of the government.
They had protection in the Bill of Rights at the very least. Well, time
JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: out, time out. I think what you just stepped on is something important because they were also the organs by which the Federalists were able to push their legislation and manufacture consent and they were also the friends and the landowners and the, the compatriots and wealth.
So yes, there's, there's a reason why they viewed the press as something that, that deserved to be taken care of for sure.
NICK HAUSELMAN - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: Although what you're describing is what the Republicans do now to plant stories and then cite them in their arguments. We're not
JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: wrong.
NICK HAUSELMAN - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: Yeah, so I suppose that's been going back for a long, long time, but there was a moment in this country at the very least where it did feel like the press was such a vital [01:50:00] part of our democracy and it should still be that way.
But again, when you mix democracy and you mix, uh, Capitalism, uh, eventually that's going to bleed into the press as well, where they're not going to have enough money to, to, you know, have enough journalistic integrity and then hire good journalists. And then that dies too. And then here's what we have. The New York post, excuse me, is, is now the paper of record, uh, to a lot of people.
JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: Man, uh, you know, it's also a situation where the economic, uh, circumstances around journalism become so dire that a billionaire is able to reach into their pocket and find the funds necessary to buy one of the major press organs in the country, which brings us to the response. To what we've been discussing with this reality, uh, with this rally in Madison Square Garden with Trump, which is one of the major stories over the last few days is that the Washington Post has announced that it is declining to endorse a presidential candidate for the first time since, uh, 1972.[01:51:00]
All right. This is a statement by William Lewis, the chief executive officer of the Washington Post. The Washington Post will not be making an endorsement of a presidential candidate in this election nor in any future presidential election. We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates.
As our editorial board wrote in 1960, the Washington Post has not endorsed either candidate in the presidential campaign that is in our tradition and accords with our action in full. Five of the last six elections and a reminder, they have been endorsing candidates since 1976 and what we have seen after a resignation, uh, from, uh, Robert Kagan of the Washington post and critiques by other members of the post, we have heard.
That Jeff Bezos, the owner of Amazon and the Washington Post, and also just benefactor, uh, uh, enjoyer of a bunch of benevolent contracts in the United States government, was the one who put the kibosh on the Washington Post endorsing a presidential candidate. [01:52:00] This is capitulation. It is appeasement of Donald Trump.
There's a variety of reasons for it. But Nick, what are your initial thoughts about this before we get into the background of why this decision was made?
NICK HAUSELMAN - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: Oh, I think this is corruption. I think this is Bezos trying to avoid, uh, you get government interference in his businesses. Um, by. Pretending that half support Trump.
And so if he wins, they'll get rid of that investigation into Amazon. Uh, I think that was the issue that I'm trying to find the thread right now, but there I'd seen it on Twitter where, uh, you know, he's under scrutiny by the government right now. And he's, there's no other explanation for my mind as the fact that he's trying to cozy up to him more and prove to him, uh, that, uh, that he's on board and then in, in return, they will quash, uh, any kind of regulatory, regulatory investigations of his businesses.
JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: Well, I'll say this. First of all, I think a missing component. What you just brought up is the idea that Jeff Bezos would oppose authoritarianism in the first place. The idea that morally and ethically, he's against Donald Trump. But you know, he's been [01:53:00] compromised because of business decisions. What we are seeing is a Is a real bellwether situation in which the billionaires in this country, you'll notice Nick, all of the tech people, the, the, the tech industrialists who gained all this money at the turn of the century, creating this infrastructure that we're currently quote unquote, enjoying.
You'll notice Elon Musk bought Donald Trump and is using him for his own purposes. Mark Zuckerberg is suddenly very Trump curious and Jeff Bezos is now. And by the way, For the record, I don't think a Washington Post endorsement would have given the presidency to Kamala Harris. It's the point that it was withheld that's important.
There are investigations of Amazon and Bezos's, uh, actions. That, by the way, was activated by Donald Trump consistently posting that he was going to go after the people who helped Kamala Harris, endorsed her, gave her money, you name it. So that right there was a legal threat. But on top of that, Nick, Jeff Bezos, like Elon Musk, like Mark Zuckerberg, like all these other tech industrialists, where do they get [01:54:00] their real money from besides the products and subscriptions that they sell?
They get it from their government contracts. They get it from their multi billion dollar contracts that they get helping the government operate their systems, including the military industrial complex, the space agencies, and just the logistics of federalism. So as a result, Why would Jeff Bezos allow his paper to endorse somebody, right?
Like, it isn't actually in his favor to do that, considering the state of play, how it has changed.
Trump & Musk Are Engineering a Recession Why Billionaires Profit When America’s Economy Crashes - Thom Hartmann Program - Air Date 11-1-24
THOM HARTMANN - HOST, THOM HARTMANN PROGRAM: The recession racket, Musk, Trump, and the billionaire's blueprint for profit. And, you know, in a recent town hall, a multi billionaire, world's Musk, acknowledged what 23 Nobel Prize winning economists across the country have predicted, that if Trump is elected and he and Elon undertake their project to gut government spending, it will provoke a severe recession.
Moss said, we have to reduce spending to live within our means, and you know that necessarily involves some temporary [01:55:00] hardship. Right. But it will ensure long term prosperity. Most Republican voters are not taking this seriously. They're like, you know, why would Republicans, who, you know, generally are the party of the rich people, why would they want to crash the economy when rich people have all their money invested in the stock market and stuff like that?
Why, why would Republicans ever want to crash the market? Well, the question itself reveals a huge misunderstanding about how rich people get richer and richer and richer. They are uniquely in a position to take advantage of recessions and depressions that hurt people like you and me. I mean, this story is as old as capitalism.
Back in the 1930s, Joe Kennedy, Gloria Swanson told me this story. I used to visit her in New York. She would make me dinner in her apartment in New York City. We were both vegetarians, and she was on the board of our children's charity. And, [01:56:00] uh, just a remarkable woman, and she told me how Joe Kennedy, you know, when the market was at its bottom, Joe Kennedy was buying stock as fast, in fact, he bought a Hollywood studio.
He was one of the richest men in America as a result of the Great Depression. J. Paul Getty, his favorite phrase was, uh, buy when everyone else is selling and hold on until everyone else is buying. I mean, the afternoon of the Great Crash, J. Paul, this was, you know, October, uh, what was it, 28th, I think, 1929?
Uh, J. Paul Getty skipped his parents golden wedding anniversary celebration to get onto Wall Street to begin buying stocks. He wrote, it is the opportunity of a lifetime to get oil companies for practically nothing. And as a result of that, he became one of the richest men in America. I mean, this is, you know, recessions help.
Billionaires. They hurt you and me, but they become buying opportunities for billionaires. In, in, uh, 2007, for example, the Bush crash, [01:57:00] the stock market, uh, the American economy, home prices collapsed by 21%. Over 10 million Americans lost their homes to predatory Mnuchin, the foreclosure king, who, uh, you know, personally oversaw, uh, kicking roughly 30, 000 California families out of their homes.
Billionaires. The stock market dropped by 50 percent in the last year of Bush's presidency. On October 9th, 2007, it was at 14, 000. By March 5th, 2009, it was at 6, 500. And 8 million Americans lost their jobs. They were wiped out. And across the country, Americans who had their money in 401k's in the stock market were liquidating their 401k's, paying that, I think it's a 20 percent penalty, uh, just to get access to cash to pay their bills because they've been laid off.
And who was buying those stocks? Billionaires! Between 2009, the bottom of the bush crash in 2012, when the [01:58:00] Republic re recovery really began, the top 1% of Americans just in those three years saw their income, their income grow by over 31%, 95% of all the income gains made during that period of time, where that top 1%, if you had bought a, if you had invested a billion dollars in 2009, in the s.
It would have become 4. 6 billion in just 11 years. And by the way, during those 11 years, the combined wealth of America's billionaires went up by 80%. And then they did it again. The Trump COVID crash of 2020. Once again, the market collapsed this time under Republican Trump. working people out of work, selling stocks at a loss to pay the mortgage and buy food.
But, you know, the Dow on March 16th 2020 suffered its largest single day crash in its entire history. Worse than the Republican Great Depression of the 19 twenties and thirties. But for the investor class, [01:59:00] it was a huge opportunity. The Institute for Policy Studies documents the world's 2356 billionaires saw their wealth increased by a full 54%.
U. S. billionaires saw their wealth, their net wealth surge by 62%. Average billionaire wealth worldwide increased 27%, all just in this one year of 2020. And meanwhile, the billionaires real taxes have dropped by a full 79 percent since Reagan came into office in 1981. And, uh, so, of course, Elon Musk is saying, Yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna cause a recession.
And, uh, you know, it'll be a good thing. Well, it will, it will be a good thing for him. So, I just, I just wanted to tell ya, that's how it works. Right? I mean, the, the billionaires live and operate by different rules than you and me. It's just, it's pretty straightforward. Meanwhile, Donald [02:00:00] Trump, By the way, Donald Trump is out on bail.
Nobody seems to be mentioning this. Donald Trump is out on bail. He's awaiting, he's awaiting his, his, uh, sentencing. And, you know, I, I, I, I recall when Judge Marashan said, okay, we'll postpone the sentencing until after the election. And everybody was like, oh, Trump got away with something. Well, if Trump loses, and I think there's a good chance he does.
And after the election, Juan Michon sentences him, and there's no longer the risk that Trump is president, I think he's going to give him prison time. I mean, it'll be a hell of a lot easier for the judge. He won't have all that pressure on him. And, you know, frankly, I think if he was going to impose a jail sentence, or if he was not going to impose a jail sentence, he probably would have sentenced Trump.
You know, earlier it just said, [02:01:00] okay, you owe, you owe 300, 000. But if it's gonna be a jail term, you know, Mershon said, okay, we'll postpone this until after the election. But anyhow, Donald Trump, the guy who's out on bail, came out yesterday and said it's time to put Liz Cheney in front of a firing squad, essentially.
I mean, this, this is absolutely crazy.
Why Elon Musk Went Full MAGA Part 3 - Reveal - Air Date 10-30-24
AL LETSON - HOST, REVEAL: So now that we are in this political season and we're moving towards a presidential election, Musk isn't on the sidelines tweeting, support.
He is actually on the field playing. What is he doing to help, uh, Donald Trump become the president again?
ANNA MERLAN: Yeah. So he endorsed Donald Trump, uh, following the first assassination attempt against President Trump in July. Uh, he appeared recently at a Trump rally, but the biggest thing is that he founded the a political action committee called America Pack.
He founded it relatively recently, and he sent it, you know, [02:02:00] something like 75 million. So, There's that.
AL LETSON - HOST, REVEAL: Right. And not just that, because in the first half of October, he spent even more, about 44 million dollars. So, in all, Musk has put down around 120 million dollars to try and get Trump elected. I mean, it's so much money.
And I know that's not all he's doing, right?
ANNA MERLAN: Yeah, there's also something that's happening on the platform, which is that Twitter created, uh, something called an Election Integrity Community, which is a hub on Twitter where people can report instances of what they view as, quote, voter fraud or irregularities you see while voting in the 2024 election.
So this is, Totally user generated content, and as our colleague Julianne McShane noted the other day, it is already full of false allegations of voter fraud. So, um, it's pretty easy to see where this is going.
AL LETSON - HOST, REVEAL: It sounds like what he's [02:03:00] created is a conspiracy theory generator, like an engine of conspiracy theory.
ANNA MERLAN: Yeah, specifically around voter fraud. And of course, uh, allegations of voter fraud are becoming more More and more common. Every single time we have an election, especially from powerful people, especially from powerful people who lose. So what he's done really is like turbo charged that dynamic for this particular election, you know, well ahead of any votes taking place,
AL LETSON - HOST, REVEAL: which we should say that.
In all the cases where voter fraud has been investigated, and it's been investigated a lot, there is very little evidence that it is actually happening. Especially, there's no evidence that it's happening on a massive scale.
ANNA MERLAN: Right, there's none, but it's one of those things where Having somebody like Elon Musk, uh, make these claims to a massive platform over and over and over again has ill effects and it can probably change what people think about voter fraud.
Um, I should also mention that he recently appeared at a [02:04:00] rally in support of Donald Trump in Pennsylvania, and he seemed to refer to false conspiracy theories that Dominion voting machines were part of a plot to rig U. S. elections.
AL LETSON - HOST, REVEAL: Yeah, I mean, it feels like he is begging to get into a fight with Dominion.
Yeah. Dominion got almost 800 million in a settlement after it sued Fox News over defamation. So, I mean, good luck.
ANNA MERLAN: Yeah, it's a very interesting choice and I'm curious to see if he continues, uh, making these particular claims.
AL LETSON - HOST, REVEAL: In the past, someone with Musk's stature and wealth making false claims about election security still might not break the law.
through to the public, but, but Elon Musk isn't your typical billionaire.
ANNA MERLAN: There have always been, you know, billionaires and titans of industry who get involved in politics, but I think the scale of Musk's involvement is really different because it's not just that he's a billionaire. It's not just that he's endorsing Trump.
It's [02:05:00] also that he controls a powerful And widespread communication medium, which is Twitter.
SECTION D - TRUMP THE FASCIST
JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And finally section D Trump, the fascist.
Imara Jones Transphobia Is Key Pillar of Trump's Push for a Patriarchal Fascist Regime - Democracy Now - Air Date 10-30-24
AMY GOODMAN: We look now at how Republicans are spending tens of millions of dollars, something like over $60 million, to flood the airwaves and social media with political ads that attack transgender rights. The Trump campaign is running the first-ever presidential campaign ad on the topic, and the Senate Leadership Fund, backed by Mitch McConnell, is running ads in key Senate races in swing states, often during major football games.
NARRATOR: Kamala was the first to help pay for a prisoner’s sex change.
VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: The power that I had, I used it in a way that was about pushing forward the movement, frankly, and the agenda.
NARRATOR: Kamala’s agenda is they/them, not you.
But Brown voted multiple times to allow transgender biological males to participate in girls’ sports.
Baldwin supported [02:06:00] providing puberty blockers and sex change surgeries to minor children. She even supports forcing Wisconsin women’s domestic violence shelters to admit biological men who claim to identify as women.
AMY GOODMAN: Anti-trans attacks are a key part of Trump’s message. Some say it’s his closing message. At a Bronx barbershop campaign stop aired on Fox last week, Trump pivoted back to trans kids when asked how he would improve schools.
DONALD TRUMP: I say reading, writing and arithmetic. No transgender, no operations. You know, they take your kid. There are some places, your boy leaves for school, comes back a girl. OK? Without parental consent. What is that all about?
AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined by Imara Jones, founder and CEO of TransLash Media, host of its investigative podcast The Anti-Trans Hate Machine, which just launched a new season about how [02:07:00] paramilitary groups have weaponized transphobia to forge ties to Republicans and stoke political violence. Imara Jones’ new piece for Newsweek is headlined “What’s at Stake for Trans People in This Election” in national, state and local races.
Welcome back to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us, Imara.
IMARA JONES: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: So, if you can talk about the overall climate? I mean, I listened to almost every speech on Sunday at Madison Square Garden. Almost every speaker, including Robert F. Kennedy, talked about trans issues. I think his line was “We’re going to protect women’s sports.” But if you can talk about the overall climate, the tens of million of dollars being put into ads?
IMARA JONES: Well, I’m sorry that you did that to yourself, Amy, and watched for six hours.
I think that what we have to be very clear about is that transphobia is not just a plank, but a key pillar of the Republican Party. It has staked a large part of its argument as to [02:08:00] why it should be in power and why it should return to power due to transphobia and due to its campaign against trans people. It’s sort of that and immigration are essentially the reasons why they say that they should be reelected.
And I think that, for them, anti-trans hate does a couple of things. I think the first thing that it does is that it helps them continue to animate their base and to essentially give them something to focus on after abortion. For several years, they’ve known that abortion was going to be on the chopping block and that they had a key part of their constituency that was engaged on gender, and so they have to give that group of people something to do, essentially.
Secondly, it allows them to have inroads into places and people that they would never be in conversation with. They normally wouldn’t be in conversation with suburban moms, who they had been turned off to. They wouldn’t be able to be in conversation with certain Black religious [02:09:00] people and Latinos who are evangelicals, or even some gay people — right? — who are anti-trans, the so-called TERFs. So, what this does is that it allows them to be able to shave off just enough votes in marginal races to eke out a win. And that’s what they look at this issue as. And I think the fact that they’ve dropped so much money on these ads tells us that they believe that this race is extremely close or they’re behind. And so, what they’re trying to do is to pick up one or two votes per precinct in order to win, which was Donald Trump’s margin over Hillary Clinton in Michigan in 2016, for example.
And the last thing that it does for them is that it cements them as a Christian nationalist party. It is the imprimatur of the fact that the Republican Party has become an extremist movement that has been taken over by the Christian nationalist movement and brands them as such and puts them in league not [02:10:00] only with political extremists, but also paramilitary extremists, in a bid to destabilize democracy from the ground up.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And, Imara, I wanted to ask you — The Wall Street Journal's editorial board recently ran a piece titled “Transgender Sports Is a 2024 Sleeper Issue,” and they especially focused on Senate races in Ohio, Montana and Wisconsin. I'm wondering your response and why particularly these states that they’re focusing on.
IMARA JONES: Well, those states are Republican-leaning states where the Senate candidates in those states have to rely on a lot of Republican votes, or independent voters who lean Republican, in order to be able to win. Those are also all tight races — right? — which is where you want to deploy, from their perspective, anti-trans issues and anti-trans hate or discomfort at a minimum. And so, it is a part of that [02:11:00] strategy of eking out votes, getting just enough, and playing to Republicans and reminding them that the candidates that they might be inclined to vote for in this race might be strange or somehow anti-American or, in some ways, just, you know, weird people, to turn the phrase back on Democrats. So, it’s an otherization that’s happening with this issue. And again, it’s in these tight Senate races where these Democrats have to rely on Republican votes.
And the Republican Party, in a really short amount of time, has primed its entire base to be concerned and to be focused on anti-trans issues. So, they’re ripe for it, you know? In the last four years, they have passed anti-trans laws in half of the country. And just this year, 600 anti-trans bills have been introduced, becoming more extreme each year. So, this is just something that [02:12:00] Republican voters are naturally inclined to focus on. And so, if you’re in a tight race and you have to rely on some Republican votes, and as a Republican, you see the Democrat is doing that and maybe making inroads, then you want to deploy this issue as a way to bring those voters back home.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And you’ve also looked into how paramilitary groups have used anti-trans politics to forge closer ties to Republicans. Could you talk about what you found?
So, essentially, anti-trans issues acts as an affinity point between paramilitary groups and the Republican Party. And one of the things that happened after January 6th is that these paramilitary groups saw that if you do one big thing against the national government, the national government deploys its power. But what these groups decided to do was to atomize themselves, to go local, in the words of Gavin McInnes, who told me in an [02:13:00] interview that that was their strategy.
AMY GOODMAN: The founder of Proud Boys.
IMARA JONES: The founder of Proud Boys. And what he was alluding to is the fact that these groups have kept their members engaged, recruited new members, forged relationships with local politicians, Republican politicians, all across the country, and continued to develop their brand by focusing on Drag Story Hours and protesting LGBTQ events across the country. And so, it seemed as if the Proud Boys and the other groups had gone away, but all they’ve done is gone to ground. And because they’ve focused on LGBTQ issues, local authorities and other politicians and even the mainstream media have ignored their continued development and growing strength, because they see, “Oh, they’re just protesting, you know, Drag Story Hours.” But what they’ve been doing is exercising themselves and getting ready for sort of the next big events.
And one of the things that we need to focus on is that [02:14:00] SPLC last year, the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremists and extremist groups, last year did a study, and in that study, they counted more extremist groups in the United States than ever, than since they’ve been counting. And half of white supremacist groups, half of those groups last year engaged in anti-LGBTQ and anti-trans actions and protests and some form of violence. So these groups have used these issues in order to grow strength below the radar for whatever comes next.
Elon Musks War on Workers Part 2 - 5-4 - AIr Date 10-29-24
MICHAEL MORBIUS - HOST, 5-4: Uh, so there's a lot going on here. You know, I, I think this is one of those cut and dry issues, right? Similar to sort of reproductive rights, where I don't feel like we need to make the case that To any listener that like Democrats are better on labor than Republicans, but there is a little bit of nuance here.
There's always a little bit of [02:15:00] tension between the reality of Trump and the aesthetic of Trump. And I think you see this disconnect on labor and workplace issues quite a bit, like Trump markets himself as a populist, the blue collar billionaire, right? But there are very few issues where he has been as explicit as his disdain for unions, right?
He openly hated them as a businessman. He laughs with Elon Musk about firing, striking workers. He implements anti union policies when he's in office. And. Yet he hasn't really suffered a lot of electoral consequences for it. Vox recently published a piece titled the Democrats pro union strategy has been a bust.
The piece basically argues that despite Joe Biden's like very pro labor, pro union policy strategy, union members are only slightly more supportive of his administration than the general [02:16:00] public is. And. That support has been consistently declining over the course of a decade on top of that. It's starting to manifest in union decision making.
The teamsters conducted an internal poll a few months back, showing 60 percent support for Donald Trump among their members. And after that, The union declined to make an endorsement in this election. The International Association of Firefighters followed their lead. I think there's like a tendency here among many people to basically just blame the union members for being idiots, right?
They're voting against their interests. They're being stupid. And I, I agree. Fundamentally. I think that's right. They, they are. And it's especially true of like. Teamsters leadership, right, who are abdicating their obligations to their members. But this is also the natural result of the Democratic Party's decisions over the past half century, right?
The party very consciously decided to move [02:17:00] away from labor as its base and then ostracized them further with like free trade deals under Clinton and Obama. Obama ignored Lieber's request for a card check bill, which would have made it easier to form unions. He sidled up to Silicon Valley billionaires.
And by the way, where are they now? Are they supporting Democrats? No, they're literally running the Trump campaign. Yeah, they're all melting down ever since Epstein's Island closed. Generally speaking, although Democrats have been better on labor than Republicans, labor is just not the priority for Democrats that it once was.
And The lower it goes down the priority list, the less likely you are to win over union members, right? That is just a simple fact. It's just how politics works. Politics isn't about being like slightly better than the other guy and then scolding voters for not being rational enough, right? You need to prioritize the things that are salient [02:18:00] to voters and Democrats haven't done that.
Right, Biden has done a solid job, but you can't undo what's now generations of walking away from organized labor in the span of a single term.
PETER SHAMSHIRI - HOST, 5-4: We can definitely debate like when this break with labor happened and what initially instigated it. Right. Because a lot of white working class voters started leaving the party during the sixties and seventies in response to civil rights.
And sure. Right. Sure. Whatever, that's not really, that's besides the point. The point is that Democrats went looking for votes elsewhere in a way that has damaged their ability to pitch themselves as an unequivocal pro union party, right? And that's a, that's a, that's a problem. It's a problem with like the big tent, right?
Just, you know, Inherently, like if your tent is big enough for labor and the management, they're fighting, you're going to have trouble convincing labor that [02:19:00] you're on their side, right? Like that's legitimately that that's, they are oppositional. Right. Those are oppositional forces. And yeah, Biden was, uh, better on labor than any democratic president I think is since Johnson, at least.
Right. As we were talking, you got to go back 50 years basically, but that's one guy. There are a lot of representatives and senators who are, who were not super pro labor, who are very private equity friendly, management friendly, not to mention that it's only four years, right? Like building a political constituency or rebuilding a political constituency takes time.
It takes a lot of time and consistency across the party. Like there's no reason why labor should trust Kamala Harris as much as they might trust Joe Biden after he's earned it, like legitimately, because they don't have the record for [02:20:00] her, right? Like, I think she'll be good on labor. I personally think so.
Um, I think they should trust her, but I think from a basic political perspective, like, I think it's defensible. I do. It's, which is unfortunate.
Elon Musk Is SO Bad At This Part 2 - The Majority Report - Air Date 11-3-24
AD: Warning this ad contains multiple instances of the c word viewer discretion is advised Kamala harris is a c word A big old c word In fact, all of the other c words think she's the biggest c word of them all you can hear this in my that's right She's a tax hiking regulation loving gun grabbing c word communist She's proud of it Kamala harris the c word america simply can't See you nationwide, Tuesday,
BRANDON SUTTON: November 5th.
See you nationwide, Tuesday. That's a good one. What were they
EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: trying to imply? It's just so, it's like they, it's like they want to say the C word, but they can't. It's almost like that.
BRANDON SUTTON: You know, I will say communist has all the [02:21:00] same letters as the word I was thinking they meant, but just, you know, a few extra ones.
MATT BINDER: Few extra. Wait, how, how did they miss the opportunity? How did they miss the opportunity at the end to say, see you next Tuesday? They did. They did. They did. They did. They said it straight up. Yeah, nationwide
MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Tuesday. As
MATT BINDER: opposed to nationwide Tuesday. That's not the same.
EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: I
BRANDON SUTTON: mean, they're so clever. They think Elon Musk, because like, he thinks he's so much smarter than everybody else.
Like he, like he, he thinks that provides plausible deniability and everyone's going to think it's really cute. This is America. People don't use that word there.
MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Does Elon only have one joke formulation, that you think something is happening and then ultimately at the end of your set up, it's another thing, like the SNL, uh, It's a class of mid direction.
The SNL pitch where he said, uh, I'm gonna whip out my cock, and it's actually just a rooster or something?
EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: I read a joke format that's supposed to subvert expectations, um, But you guys are right that he's [02:22:00] just, I don't know what this strategy is. And that this path is just incompetent. Push away women, that's the only thing I
MATT BINDER: think of.
I know. Look at the way, like. Like, like you, you see these guys out here right now, like it's, it's even more crazy what we're seeing about like their reaction to that, uh, Kamala Harris ad about, you know, uh, uh, women, you don't, uh, you don't have to tell your husband who you vote for. Their reaction to that is even crazier than they're like, Reaction to like abortion and controlling women's bodies.
Because at least there, they use their, their, their, their faux care for the children to cut to make cover there. What is the cover for getting mad that a woman would vote differently than her husband? There is no cover there. Like, it's just, they don't think women should have the ability to think or act independently of their husband.
And this is just another way of them saying how little they think of women. It's, it's incredible
EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: to see. They're [02:23:00] denigrating her. And, and, and honestly, again, like, She's a powerful woman, and they're trying to bring her down a peg, and that is what gets their, like, right wing online audience excited. But for women like me, we see that, and we're repulsed.
We're repulsed, and also motivated. And to your point, uh, Binder, like, the, the, the, They're also obsessed with methods of birth control and contraception that they can't see. Like, the ones that are always the ones that these fundamentalist Christians, uh, or fundamentalist religious people target are IUDs, the morning after pill.
Methods of birth control that women are able to, uh, Maybe doing private, or secretly, or express agency over, like they're not coming for condoms. There's some
BRANDON SUTTON: guests with no fault divorces. This is about control, like they're, you know, this is about a type of man who sees their, you know, their wife, or their girlfriend, or any woman who they might have sexual or intimate desires for as property or potential [02:24:00] property, just like their children.
They're also obsessed with controlling every aspect of their, their child's life. Uh, but I, I just, I'm always reminded of like when Sam was talking about that, uh, post State of the Union address by that Tea Party candidate for years ago. Michelle Bachmann, how like, you know, she was looking at the Tea Party camera and so facing like a profile.
This is the wrong side. Yeah. It's like a profile to like the main camera and how he would say, you can't speak to the Tea Party and the rest of America at the same time. And this is like a furtherance of that problem where it's like, you can't speak to the GOP's base of divorced dads and incels and also speak to the women and children who have no contact orders with them.
And they've basically given up
EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: on it, right? Like Trump won in 2016 with a lot of suburban women and he's. polling really poorly with suburban women now, so they're just hyper driving the mail vote. It seems like.
MATT BINDER: I think the difference is like, like with what Brandon said, like that, that's a great analogy with the Michelle Bachman staring at the tea [02:25:00] party camera.
But then they knew. That there was this fringe that they had to speak to. They knew there was two separates. There was main, the mainstream and then their fringe. And yes, they would speak to their fringe, but ever since Trump, because Trump just had that outlier win in 2016. They now are convinced that they are the masses, that that fringe is now everybody.
So they now deliver that tea party address while staring at the mainstream America camera. Because they are convinced they, the fringe is now everybody or at least The vast majority of people who will now support them because that's the same reason why they can't believe that they lost in 2020 and that they won't believe that they lost in 2024.
They no longer live in the reality where they even know that there's that fringe that they have to speak to, to win. They now think that fringe is the mainstream and they're speaking the same way to everybody.
EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Well, there's no, there's no Republicans [02:26:00] that are basically telling them traditional political things like this is time to pivot to the center, this is time to appeal to moderate voters, this is time to reclaim your image as someone who's too extreme or anti democratic, and the, the idea that, the sign that they weren't going to do this was with the J.
D. Vance election, um, that was not a selection that's meant to win, um, Over parts of the electorate that you're struggling with, that's one to hypercharge your base, and it was an arrogance decision made when Biden was still in the race.
Imara Jones Transphobia Is Key Pillar of Trump's Push for a Patriarchal Fascist Regime Part 2 - Democracy Now - Air Date 10-30-24
IMARA JONES: Hi. I’m Imara Jones. I’ve spent years investigating authoritarian and far-right movements. And lately I’ve been alarmed by the rise in dangerous political violence across the United States. It’s at levels not seen since the 1970s. And an unprecedented amount of this violence is being directed at queer and trans people.
NOELLE BELLOW: Drag queen story time interrupted at an East Bay library, a hate crime investigation now underway.
IMARA JONES: So, on this season of The Anti-Trans Hate [02:27:00] Machine, I’m going to show how the anti-trans ecosystem has expanded its fight from legislatures and courtrooms to the streets, and what this means for all of us.
ELI: Everybody was armed that day. Everybody was carrying sidearms. Everybody had knives on display. Everybody was putting their hands on their pistol grips.
IMARA JONES: Paramilitary groups have seized upon anti-trans hate to solidify their alliance with supposedly mainstream conservatives. I’ll show you how these attacks are part of a coordinated strategy to bring about a patriarchal, fascist regime in America, one where queer people would be erased from public life.
ANITA PARISOT: If the bullets start flying, I’m covering her up. And I’m taking the bullet for her, and she’ll survive. So she has to be with me.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s the trailer for the new season three of Anti-Trans Hate Machine. You talk about a lot of specifics here, groups in Idaho who are using the state as a testing [02:28:00] ground for a new wave of extremism. Episode three, “No Such Thing as a Lone Wolf,” looks at the responses and solutions to terrorist violence fueled by anti-trans hate. You’re looking at Wadsworth, Ohio. Tell us some specific stories and also how they relate to down-ballot races.
IMARA JONES: So, one of the things that’s happening in Idaho — there’s so many examples, but in Idaho is the fact that extremist groups, paramilitary groups have found common cause with an organization called the Idaho Freedom Foundation. And the Idaho Freedom Foundation acts as sort of this connective tissue between paramilitary groups, extremist politicians and the promulgation of laws to make the state more extreme.
And essentially, what they are all doing is working to create an atmosphere of fear and intimidation at the local [02:29:00] level, transforming what was once a right-leaning “mainstream,” in quotes, Republican Party into one dominated by people who want to do things or are promoting to do things like make paramilitary groups legal in the state, to literally legalize them. And this air of intimidation means that people who are considering running for races, who may not be extremist politicians, come under threats, people who put LGBTQ signs or pro-anything other than what Christian nationalists want in their yards. One person drove up to a person that we interviewed and told her when she put an LGBTQ sign in her yard, “Thanks for putting that sign in your yard, because we know where to shoot when the bullets fly.”
And so, what this is doing is using the paramilitary groups as a way of shifting the comfort level with [02:30:00] democracy, with making your voice heard at the democratic level, and therefore getting more and extreme politicians there. And they’re working and also signaling with places like Libs of TikTok, which put out a call around an LGBTQ event in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. And that event in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, drew in Patriot Front, who was there to stoke violence that day as a part of what an Idaho Freedom Foundation politician had called for in terms of protesting that event.
And the problem with Idaho is that it’s a Petri dish for these conditions, where we are starting to see it occur in other places, like Tennessee, where Patriot Front is beginning to make more and more of a show of force. It’s passed more anti-trans laws than any other state in the country. And so, what we’re seeing is this affinity, I mean, even in places like New York City, where the Proud Boys are increasingly allying with [02:31:00] certain, believe it or not, Republican members of the City Council around Drag Story Hour events here. So, what is happening is that being anti-trans is a signal for extremists as to who’s on their side, and that signal then allows them to work together to push the country more and more to its extremes.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And, Imara, I wanted to ask you: There’s been a lot of attention focused on Project 2025 by the Democrats, but could you talk about the central place that anti-trans ideology plays in Project 2025?
IMARA JONES: You can’t understand Project 2025 without understanding or grasping the Republican Party’s obsession with trans people and with transphobia. As a matter of fact, anti-trans sentiment and anti-trans, you know, ideas are on page [02:32:00] one of Project 2025, going into page two. It’s literally on the first page. And essentially, Project 2025, with its weaponization of government, is essentially taking all of the learnings that the Trump administration garnered from its anti-trans policies, where it learned how to weaponize the government against a group of people, in healthcare, in the military, in education, attempted in housing, and essentially then took those learnings and then applied them to Project 2025. As a matter of fact, one of the key architects of Trump’s anti-trans policies, Roger Severino, is one of the key people who drafted and wrote Project 2025. And to close the loop, you know, he and other people were at the Heritage Foundation, came into the Trump administration with these policies and are now carrying them through, applying them to many people through Project 2025.
Credits
JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: That's going to be it for [02:33:00] today. As always, keep the comments coming in. I would love to hear your thoughts or questions about today's topic or anything else. You can leave a voicemail or send us a text at 202-999-3991, or simply email me to [email protected].
The additional sections of the show included clips from The Bradcast; The Majority Report; Today, Explained; Democracy Now!; Reveal; The Muckrake Political Podcast; The Thom Hartmann Program; and 5-4. Further details are in the show notes.
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So coming to you from far outside the conventional wisdom of Washington DC, my name is Jay!, and this has been the Best of the Left podcast coming to you twice weekly, thanks entirely to the members and donors to the show from BestoftheLeft.Com.
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